The first rule of prison fight club: make sure someone’s getting it on camera.

According to video evidence inmates in Auckland’s Mount Eden prison have been engaging in their very own version of Fight Club.

Despite cellular telecommunications devices being prohibited items in jail, that’s precisely what these guys are using to capture the footage before uploading it to YouTube.

A criminologist has been heard calling it ‘Shocking, disgraceful, unforgivable…’ but as I see it, probably more shocking, disgraceful and unforgivable are the crimes these thugs committed to end up in New Zealand’s most well known prison.

Supposedly this fighting is taking place as a form of ‘gang initiation’ or related senseless ordeal but personally, the whole thing smacks of Correction Department corruption – the fact these inmates even have cell phones on which to record the brawling, the fact these inmates have an uninterrupted location in which to conduct the brawling; the fact these Mount Eden prison inmates are partaking in these kinds of liberal antics at all.

Chances are somebody’s making money from it. That’s how these things usually work. Reminiscent of idiot graffiti artists around the world who have found a way to cash in on their vandalism of freight trains by videoing the act then uploading it to the God-forsaken Internet, what they’re doing is really no better than extortion – these people are producing nothing of value, they’re benefitting nobody and it’s only people’s innate lack of willpower that forces them to view it in the first instance.

The Internet has provided the world with an infinite wealth of knowledge at our fingertips, yet we insist on clogging its channels with inane videos of pillocks being pillocks, and cats being cute.

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Ton Turn Nett

Photography by Prison Hilton Ltd