American Prison: A Reporter’s Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment

American Prison: A Reporter’s Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment by Shane Bauer          AudioBook: 10 hrs, 25 mins       Hardback book:  368 pages            

Excellent Book.    Shane Bauer, an award winning journalist working for the magazine,  Mother Jones, went undercover as a Correctional Officer for a privately owned prison in Winnfield, Louisiana.   He had heard awful things about the treatment of prisoners in privatized prisons in the United States and wanted to do a story about the system.   After a lot of research and consideration he found a privately owned prison that was hiring.   Using his real name he applied for a position as a correctional officer and got it.   Using his real name, had the prison done a check on him they would have found out pretty quickly that he was a reporter and had won awards for his work as journalist in the past, but, it became clear that they didn’t do very thorough checks if they checked at all.    He was hired.   The magazine paid for his hotel stay and off to Louisiana he went.   He went through the training classes with several other applicants both male and female of varied ages.   One older lady had to drop out.   She had asthma and was not supposed to carry her inhaler into the prison.  A couple more of the applicants were weeded out for various reasons, but Shane made it all the way through and actually went to work as a correctional officer.   Some of the training classes were enlightening but not in a good way.   The instructors discussed looking the other way if an officer and an inmate were involved in an altercation as long as the officer was on top of the situation,  but if the situation were reversed officers were to respond and help control the situation (ie. use whatever force they deemed appropriate);  not necessarily responding if a couple of inmates were fighting; and so forth.    Shane cites true historical accounts of actions taken by guards at the prison from just after slavery had been abolished to current day.  To get back at guards that peeved them, inmates would throw excrement and urine on the guards as a means of retaliation which could land them in solitary confinement and the term of the confinement was up to the prison officials regardless of the mental state of the inmate.   Prisoners were not considered to have any rights and any kindness a prisoner received from a CO (correctional officer), sharing a smoke, getting too chummy talking to inmates, not writing them up when they had committed an infraction of the rules could get the Co fired.    Shane found himself falling into the role way too easily of writing the prisoners up for any little infraction and even his wife noticed he had changed to a more moody disposition.   It is a good piece of investigative reporting and this book came from the original article he wrote for Mother Jones magazine.   There are so many things you will learn here about what it is actually like behind prison walls for both those that are incarcerated and those who work inside the walls.   It is a book you cannot put down because your inquiring mind will want to know.   Excellent read/listen.   I highly recommend it from highschool on up.

 -- Shirley J.