Name: American Prison
ISBN: 9780735223585

Shane Bauer

"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 ... In [this book], Bauer weaves a ... reckoning with his experiences together with a ... history of for-profit prisons in America from their origins in the decades before the Civil War"--

A Reporter's Undercover Journey Into the Business of Punishment

American Prison

Derek Barlas

A journalist goes undercover as a prison guard to investigate privately run "for profit" prisons in the US. Very interesting.

I'm not sure how accurate everything that happened in this book is. The author himself isn't 100% sure that what he was told during his 4 month stint is completely true. He does rely, in some of the instances, on first hand accounts from inmates and officers about horrible doings and what it's really like in CCA prisons.

Personally, I'm inclined to believe that bad things can certainly happen in the prison system. I think that it isn't a far stretch for some of these things to have happened. The book is gripping and enlightening if you, like me, didn't previously know much about the system of chain gangs and near slave labor of prisoners in the South.

I think that the summary overemphasizes some of his pathos in the book. There were a few times when he mentions his prior prison experience and how horrible he felt about doing similar things to the current prisoners, but it doesn't overshadow the Book.

Definitely worth a read if you can take what Bauer says with a grain of salt and want to learn the history of for-profit prisons.

Bradley

An enraging, necessary look at the private prison system, and a convincing clarion call for prison reform.” —NPR.org New 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 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.

A Reporter's Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment

iamazoo

Ketan Nayak

Kevin. j Mercil 

After his 2014 expose about his experiences as a prison guard in a Lousisiana for-profit prison, Shane Bauer soon realised the cruelty of the current American system and its place in the larger story of mass incarceration cannot be understood without first understanding its origins. In American Prison, Bauer weaves together a deeper reckoning of his prison guard experience with a thorough history of for-profit prisons in America. A blistering accusation of the private prison system in the United States, American Prison is a necessary human document about the true face of justice in the USA.

American Prison A Reporter's Undercover Journey Into the Business of Punishment

Reviews

Highlights