An enraging, necessary look at the private prison system, and a convincing clarion call for prison reform.” —NPR.orgNew York Times Book Review 10 Best Books of 2018 * One of President Barack Obama’s favorite books of 2018 * Winner of the 2019 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize * Winner of the Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism * Winner of the 2019 RFK Book and Journalism Award * A … Book and Journalism Award * A New York Times Notable Book
A ground-breaking and brave inside reckoning with the nexus of prison and profit in America: in one Louisiana prison and over the course of our country’s history.
In 2014, Shane Bauer was hired for $9 an hour to work as an entry-level prison guard at a private prison in Winnfield, Louisiana. An award-winning investigative journalist, he used his real name; there was no meaningful background check. Four months later, his employment came to an abrupt end. But he had seen enough, and in short order he wrote an exposé about his experiences that won a National Magazine Award and became the most-read feature in the history of the magazine Mother Jones. Still, there was much more that he needed to say. In American Prison, Bauer weaves a much deeper reckoning with his experiences together with a thoroughly researched history of for-profit prisons in America from their origins in the decades before the Civil War. For, as he soon realized, we can’t understand the cruelty of our current system and its place in the larger story of mass incarceration without understanding where it came from. Private prisons became entrenched in the South as part of a systemic effort to keep the African-American labor force in place in the aftermath of slavery, and the echoes of these shameful origins are with us still.
The private prison system is deliberately unaccountable to public scrutiny. Private prisons are not incentivized to tend to the health of their inmates, or to feed them well, or to attract and retain a highly-trained prison staff. Though Bauer befriends some of his colleagues and sympathizes with their plight, the chronic dysfunction of their lives only adds to the prison’s sense of chaos. To his horror, Bauer finds himself becoming crueler and more aggressive the longer he works in the prison, and he is far from alone.
A blistering indictment of the private prison system, and the powerful forces that drive it, American Prison is a necessary human document about the true face of justice in America.
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Sometimes the only way to get the full story is to put yourself into it as an ‘immersion journalist.’ Shane Bauer wanted to know more about for-profit prisons so he got a job in one as a correction officer, or guard, and reports his experiences grippingly while weaving in the social and economic factors that give rise to these horrors. His book reveals much that that we didn’t want to know about but, having learned about, can never forget.
American Prison is a searing, page-turning indictment of America’s practice of corporate incarceration. Shane Bauer reports in the best way a journalist can: by going into a prison himself. But then he connects the dots, drawing a persuasive through-line from plantations worked by slaves, to Southern prison farms, to corporate prisons. With this braid of history and reportage Bauer reveals the criminal nature of private prisons, a world of pain that is also a business. His is a beautiful rage.
This is a must-read for every American citizen. Excellent writing reveals the author’s experience in for-profit prison while also examining the centuries of American profiteering related to prisons, especially post-Civil War.
Very good portrayal of profit prison life.
This book is an eye-opener that details the dirty underbelly of the private for-profit prison system. The journalist/author knows about prisons, having spent two years in one in Iran, the result of accidentally wandering across its border. Shane Bauer goes underground to expose the inhumane treatment of prisoners in this country by applying for a job as a correction officer at one of our corporate for-profit prisons. He intersperses his own experience as a “cadet” with chapters that develop the sordid history of southern plantation owners who profited from “leasing” their slaves to government and private industry, and draws a direct line to the current use of prisoner labor for corporate profit. He exposes the horrific treatment inflicted on the prisoners by his fellow correction officers, overworked, underpaid ($9.00 an hour), poorly educated and impoverished.
Before reading this book, I had a negative, but only vague impression of how our prison system evolved and worked (and doesn’t work) but this book opened my eyes to see what I shall never forget.
A very disturbing description of the hiring practices and management of private prisons in our country.
The book was an expose’ of a private prison in the south. It did give you a very informative view of that particular prison. I was looking for a more typical state prison. Although it was packed with information with how life is in this particular private prison, I got the feeling this wasn’t typical at all of our prison systems in this country. I would recommend this book anyhow because it was very well written and the author does take you inside this prison.
Great look at the basically evil industry that makes a profit by incarcerating citizens. A good insight into the history, evolution, and reality of this for profit-based corrupt system. It will leave you angry.
Shane Bauer is an investigative reporter who first came to public attention by getting himself locked up in Iran for a couple of years after straying over the border with Iraq. Having experienced life as a prisoner, he then went undercover for Mother Jones magazine for several months in 2015 as a prison guard at a privately run prison in Louisiana. The resulting exposé lays bare the unsavory business of running prisons for profit.
Bauer’s first-person account of his months on the job alternates with chapters on the history of convict labor in the southern U.S., which bore a remarkable resemblance to slavery. Forced labor was very profitable for states, which leased their convicts to private companies to pick cotton, build railroads and so forth; as might have been expected, nothing in the incentive structure encouraged protection of the convicts’ well-being, and they tended to die like flies.
Issues are different in the modern private prison industry, but Bauer shows that the profit motive still compromises inmate well-being, with corners cut on medical care, rehabilitation programs and the like in order to protect the bottom line. Bauer’s eyewitness testimony illuminates why private prisons consistently have higher rates of violence and worse conditions than state-run institutions.
Which is a sadly low bar… Not a cheery book, but a necessary one.