Burgess COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

None selected Skip to content

An undercover look at America’s private prison system

Mother Jones Unsubscribe

The following sponsored message from Penguin Press has been sent to you via Mother Jones. We're a nonprofit, and a majority of our budget comes from readers like you—but revenue from advertisers helps us run a stable business, maintain independence, and produce more of the hard-hitting journalism you expect from us.

Mother Jones and its non-profit publisher, the Foundation for National Progress, does not endorse any political candidate, political organization, commercial product, process or service, and the views expressed in this communication do not constitute an endorsement, recommendation or favoring by Mother Jones. For advertising opportunities see our online media kit.

MOTHERJONES.COM 222 Sutter Street, #600 San Francisco, CA USA 94108
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ABOUT AMERICAN PRISON

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.

PRAISE

“One of the most incisive — and damning — investigations into prison culture and business in recent memory, Bauer’s illuminating hybrid memoir and sociological study shines much-needed light into some dark corners of the criminal justice system.” —Boston Globe

“Riveting…Bauer himself was held in an [Iranian] prison for two years, so he knows what it feels like to be on the inside, yet he brings to the text a journalist’s purview and draws a direct line between American slavery, the founders of the prison corporations and the job he is hired to do. In a fascinating tightrope walk, Bauer shows that, in this so-called industry, the financial bottom line comes at a high human cost.” —Oprah.com

“[AMERICAN PRISON] takes a broader look at the history of cruel punishment in America. But the searing details of his time in the Winn facility form the brutal core of his indictment: evidence of systematic cruelty and profiteering that starts to erode the morality of prisoners and guards alike.” —Vulture

“A penetrating exposé on the cruelty and mind-bending corruption of privately run prisons across the United States…Nearly every page of this tale contains examples of shocking inhumanity…A potent, necessary broadside against incarceration in the U.S.” — Kirkus, starred review

“Deprivation, abuse, and fear oppress inmates and guards alike in this hard-hitting exposé of the for-profit prison industry…A gripping indictment of a bad business.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Bauer’s amazing book examines one of slavery’s toxic legacies, using convicted people to make profit . . . He observes an acutely dangerous and out-of-control environment created by CCA’s profit-driven underpaying of staff and understaffing of prisons. Bauer’s historical and journalistic work should be required reading.” —Booklist

“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.” —Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed

“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.” —Ted Conover, Pulitzer Prize finalist and director of the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute of New York University

VIDEO & MEDIA