Did a video shared in April 2025 show a real prison guard smoking and partying with real prisoners in a prison cell? No, that's not true: The clip, which bore the caption "Jail Life", was recorded at a party attended by participants in "Banged Up", a prison-based reality TV show that aired in the U.K. in 2023. The woman in the video was Melissa Burgoyne Cox, a former real-life prison guard who took part in the show.
The clip was presented as real in an April 22, 2025 post on X (archived here), which read in part:
Jail life...
Why do they insist on having female prison officers in male prisons???
This is what the post looked like at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot)
In fact, the video did not show a real prison guard, or real prisoners. It was recorded at a party for participants in a reality TV show called "Banged Up", which aired on Channel 4 in the U.K. in 2023.
The show placed public figures, including an actor and a Member of Parliament, in a decommissioned prison in Shrewsbury in England, along with former prison inmates and a team of ex-prison guards.
The woman shown smoking in the clip is Melissa Burgoyne-Cox, one of the former prison guards who took part in the show:
(Source: YouTube screenshot)
In October 2023, Burgoyne-Cox herself posted clips from the "party" video on her own TikTok account, along with #bangedupc4, a hashtag associated with the reality TV show.
After the footage was shared out of context, she posted another video in which she clarified what the video actually showed:
That is not a working prison, those are not real prisoners, and I am not, in fact, a real prison officer...
@offthecuffwithmel #bangedupch4 #part2 #foryou ♬ original sound - #OffTheCuffWithMel
