The Lock Up - Season 1

Two thirds of young offenders usually grow out of a life of crime, but in the first of this eight-part series, Sgt Jane Biglin has a guest list of regular clients - the dangerous ASBO breaker who gives an Oscar-winning performance to get out of jail; the prostitute who finds refuge in the cells; and the young thief, a heroin addict since he was 15, who goes cold turkey.

The Lock Up is the place to sober up. Whether you are smashed, steaming or sozzled, alcohol plays a part in a million violent assaults countrywide every year. In the second part of the series, Sgt Rich West, policeman and Football League linesman, calls time on the prisoners who kick off.

When a fight breaks out after a wedding it gets fruity for the custody team as they get a frisking from a guest - a fresh first-timer and mother of two. The sergeant talks down a violent headbanger who gives himself a headache on the cell door. A teenage graffiti artist arrives smashed, and so is his mother's house after he has been on a drunken rampage. And an old regular is still standing after blowing five times over the limit, a level that could have have killed some people.

This episode looks at how kids at the bottom of the pile are dealt with when they are arrested and find themselves alone in the Lock Up. It's out of hours, there are no parents on the scene and no-one other than the busy custody team to keep them company, apart from a bunch of violent, suicidal and hardened adult criminals.

The Lock Up is no place to be young and once they're in, one in three is destined to reoffend. It's up to police and social services to get them back on track. Sgt Dave Beer finds himself babysitting two regulars - two girls in care, aged 11 and 12, one nicked for assault, the other for threatening to set fire to her care worker's hair. An 11-year-old first-timer, too small to reach the custody desk to sign his name, spends ten hours alone in the Lock Up overnight.

The mum of a drunken 36-year-old visits the Lock Up and begs him to give up the demon drink for the sake of his family and a teenager is nicked for burgling the old age pensioner whose dog he walks.

It's a round of medical emergencies and digestive dilemmas for Sgt Peter Swann, famed in Humberside Police for his everlasting appetite. The sergeant finds himself face to face with a cheese thief who steals to feed his drugs habit; a burglar who won't eat or drink because he has swallowed his loot and refuses to go through the evidential 'motions'; and the teenage boozer who wants to be a copper and is so drunk she can't keep anything down.

A copper by name and a copper by nature, stand-in sergeant Stu Constable faces a prisoner's ultimate weapon, bodily fluids, in a dirty protest at the suite. When an old soldier collapses with a suspected stroke, the sergeant has to contend with the hospital medics who send the veteran back to the Lock Up. And will Sgt Constable solve the mystery of the 5ft-nothing drunk claiming to be a millionaire jockey who rode 700 winners?

After running a red light with the cops in tow, a drunk and strangely-garbed student faces a career in tatters. It's a long expensive road back to Vietnam for the illegal cannabis grower who has paid a gang 6,000 euros to get him to the UK. And it is touch and go whether a 17-year-old will get the mental health care he needs on the outside.

In this episode, it's the rookie Sgt Rob Grunner's turn - the singing burglar, Hull's worst car thief and the alleged cat killer are regulars who all know the rules and how to bend them. A young female shoplifter pushes the contest to the brink and faces a 50,000 volts tazer gun. The only other rookie in the Lock Up is the champagne-drinking mother of three, caught over the limit.

Sgt Goode shows he's no rookie either when he faces a noisy nine-hour battle of wills with a youngster who refuses to give up his name. There's no smoke without fire when he discovers a stash of smuggled fags, and he brings relief to a squaddie who is told to put a cork in it while he's breathalysed. The sergeant wields the emergency custody air freshener when a bunch of down and outs are nicked, and he charges an addict in his twenties who will go back to prison for a fortieth time.