One assistant warden makes clear to the prison employees that he considers the prisoners to be little more than livestock: “We want them institutionalized, not individualized. He also begins to believe that the prison companies have no interest in trying to rehabilitate the incarcerated, or even treat them like real people. They listen to me, and a part of me likes that.” I tell inmates to take their hats off as they enter. Initially reluctant to flaunt his authority, he begins to get used to being able to order people around: “I stand tall, broaden my shoulders, and stride up and down the floor, making enough eye contact with people to show I’m not intimidated but not holding it long enough to threaten them. One instructor he encounters tells the cadets not to bother trying to break up a fight between prisoners, because the guards aren’t getting paid enough for that: “So if them fools want to cut each other, well, happy cutting.” The instructor also reassures the guards in training that he’ll have their backs no matter what they do: “If you are an officer and you do something 100 percent wrong, I’m going to take your side right on the spot.”Īlthough he finds his new job more difficult than he’d hoped, Bauer continues to show up for work - armed with a hidden camera and audio recorder. A quick Google search of Bauer’s name would have revealed that he was an investigative reporter, but CCA didn’t know or didn’t care he was hired quickly to be a prison guard at Winn Correctional Center in northern Louisiana.īauer writes that he first got hint of a problem almost immediately after he started the training program for his new job. The nation’s second-biggest private prison company, CCA operates nearly 100 correctional facilities across the country. In 2014, Bauer applied for a job with the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), which has since rebranded itself as CoreCivic.
“American Prison” is the remarkable story of a journalist who spent four months working as a corrections officer, and a horrifying exposé of how prisoners were treated by a corporation that profited from them.
So journalist Shane Bauer, a Minnesota native and a reporter for Mother Jones magazine, decided the only way to find out what life inside a private prison was like was to get a job at one. It can be tough to know what goes on behind prison walls, and private corrections companies are especially reluctant to open up to outsiders. Americans like to think of our country as the land of the free - but that’s not the case for everyone: More than 2 million Americans are in jails or prisons in the U.S.
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