At last, cry the punters! At last Jenny will write a blog post without reference to These Troubled Times! The reporting for American Prison took place in 2014, a very long time ago, practically before human memory began, and thus can tell us nothing about These Troubled Times. Ah, yes, but unfortunately, though Shane Bauer’s initial reporting for Mother Jones led the Obama administration to end all federal contracts with private prisons, the Trump administration under Jeff Sessions reversed that decision. Also, American prison labor is slavery, so in this regard, These Times have always been Troubled. Happy Monday!
tw: This post discusses suicide, as well as mistreatment, neglect, and abuse of prison residents.
In 2014, Shane Bauer took a job with the Corrections Corporation of America (now CoreCivic), serving as a guard at Winn Correctional Center for nine dollars an hour. He stayed for four months, at which point his cover was blown (though an illegal search of his coworker’s photography equipment), and he had to resign. He writes in American Prison about his experiences in this time, as well as the history of the American carceral project, with an emphasis on convict labor. (Convict labor is slavery. It’s literally just slavery they made a special exception for in the Constitution.)
Perhaps the most damning feature of the book is Bauer’s footnotes. Throughout the book there are footnotes with CCA’s responses to Bauer’s requests for comment. E.g., “CCA’s spokesman says the company had no knowledge of security checks being skipped or logbooks being falsified.” It starts to feel like CCA is saying “who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?” During Bauer’s time at Winn, his coworkers regularly falsify records, and his supervisor seems aghast at the idea that the prison should be responsible for supplying healthcare to inmates who fall ill. One inmate repeatedly told guards that he was suicidal; nobody brought him to suicide watch. He attempted suicide in his cell and was transferred to a hospital, where he died. CCA claims that suicide rates in their prisons are lower than in public prisons. But because this inmate’s death occurred at the hospital, not the prison, CCA does not have to report it. In a case where CCA is clearly culpable for an inmate’s death, their records do not include that death at all.
At the end of the book, Bauer attends a CoreCivic shareholders’ meeting. (Since Trump’s election, CoreCivic stock is through the roof.) The board chairman assures the assembled stockholders that they don’t have to feel nervous about folks protesting private prison companies and them, specifically. Even when he worked at Bridgestone, he tells them, the company had critics! He laughs. What I know about Bridgestone, and what Shane Bauer learned later, is that Bridgestone’s critics did not care for Bridgestone’s use of child labor in Liberian rubber farms. Thumbs up dot gif.
In conclusion, convict labor is slavery. Our carceral system is an abusive hellscape with no regard for the humanity of the people whose lives it consumes. Tell your friends.