Dateline: Oct 1

This week Dateline reports on San Antonio Prison in Venezuela, the prison with the swimming pool where nobody wants to leave.

With its swimming pool, food stalls and overnight accommodation for guests, San Antonio Prison in Venezuela could be mistaken for a holiday resort.

But it’s actually an unusual take on prison reform, where inmates live in relative comfort for the duration of their sentences. In fact, many don’t want to leave.

The criminal in charge of the prison, known as ‘The Rabbit’, gave unprecedented permission to Dateline’s Giovana Vitola to film throughout the prison on her iPhone camera to reveal what life is like there.

But alongside the dance parties and families living it up in the sunshine, the underworld of drugs, guns and violence continues, and some outside the prison question how it’s even been allowed to happen.

Also on Dateline, get a powerful insight into Syrian life through the lens of a young woman living in war torn Aleppo, and visit Mayflower Arkansas where a huge oil pipeline has burst beneath residents homes, spilling poisonous oil onto their streets and causing long-terms health and environmental problems.

9.30pm Tuesday 1 October on SBS ONE