As a supervisor in one of the tailor shops at the Clinton Correctional Facility in upstate New York, 51-year old Joyce Mitchell does more than oversee her inmates' stitching. Treating some of her charges more like friends than prisoners, she forms a dangerous liaison with two of the prison's most dangerous convicts-cop-killer David Sweat, and Richard Matt, a psychopath who hacked his boss into a dozen pieces. Zeroing in on her weaknesses, the two hardened criminals pull a classic con game and Mitchell finds herself swept up in a dangerous game where she is the unwitting pawn. Seduced by their advances and flirting with disaster, Mitchell decides not to report the two prisoners when they reveal they're planning to break out. Instead she becomes a full-fledged accomplice in a sinister plot that includes driving the getaway vehicle, murdering her husband, and escaping to Mexico with both Sweat and Matt.