Shane Bauer (1)

Can You Abide This?

Here’s a fact that most Americans probably are not aware of. According to World Prison Brief (a public, searchable database of prison populations worldwide), the United States is the world leader in imprisonment of its own citizens. Currently, the USA has a total incarcerated population of just over 2.1 million people. How does that compare with other countries? China, with more than four times the U.S. population, incarcerates 1.6 million. Russia has around 700 thousand behind bars. And these are repressive countries. Clearly, there’s something very wrong here.

To make matters even worst, and the subject of Bauer’s book, the U.S. has turned over a portion of imprisonment to private, moneymaking companies, such as Corrections Corporation of America (recently rebranded as CoreCivic). Privatizing American prison populations in the U.S. is nothing new, as Bauer illustrates in illuminating chapters alternating with his own experience as a prison guard at CoreCivic’s Winn Correctional Center north of Baton Rouge, LA (now run under contract by LaSalle Corrections). In the past, post Civil War, this proved an efficient way essentially to extend slavery and provide farmers and manufacturers with cheap labor, fodder for medical experiments, and other practices detrimental to those imprisoned, even on the most minor of offenses.

So, how well has privatizing prisons worked out? If you are prisoner warehoused, for this is precisely the state of incarceration in a CoreCivic facility, not very well. And with CoreCivic growing with immigration imprisonment under the Trump administration, more people will experience what Bauer and others have chronicled: low-paid staff, nearly nonexistent hiring standard, inadequate training, lack of supplies, shortage of personnel, overcrowding, absence of even basic medical attention and mental health services, and other abuses of prisoners.

But not everybody suffers at the hands of CoreCivic and its ilk. Some profit quite handsomely, in fact. CoreCivic, for example, has proven a profitable investment for those invested in it. While publicly traded, this is not a company widely held by the public. Its investors include CoreCivic management and investment firms. And it appears, from a financial standpoint, quite a good use of capital. As of this writing, its market cap is $2.4 billion with a dividend yield of 8.8%. All this earned in the name of justice gone horribly awry.

Hopefully, Bauer’s book will be a wake up call to many Americans. Then again, we are a country that can’t face up to our terrible record on incarceration, a country that really has no idea how bad our prison situation is, and, worse, a country that doesn’t seem to care much. If Bauer’s book just nudged the awareness needle, well, that would be an accomplishment.… (más)

Can You Abide This?

Here’s a fact that most Americans probably are not aware of. According to World Prison Brief (a public, searchable database of prison populations worldwide), the United States is the world leader in imprisonment of its own citizens. Currently, the USA has a total incarcerated population of just over 2.1 million people. How does that compare with other countries? China, with more than four times the U.S. population, incarcerates 1.6 million. Russia has around 700 thousand behind bars. And these are repressive countries. Clearly, there’s something very wrong here.

To make matters even worst, and the subject of Bauer’s book, the U.S. has turned over a portion of imprisonment to private, moneymaking companies, such as Corrections Corporation of America (recently rebranded as CoreCivic). Privatizing American prison populations in the U.S. is nothing new, as Bauer illustrates in illuminating chapters alternating with his own experience as a prison guard at CoreCivic’s Winn Correctional Center north of Baton Rouge, LA (now run under contract by LaSalle Corrections). In the past, post Civil War, this proved an efficient way essentially to extend slavery and provide farmers and manufacturers with cheap labor, fodder for medical experiments, and other practices detrimental to those imprisoned, even on the most minor of offenses.

So, how well has privatizing prisons worked out? If you are prisoner warehoused, for this is precisely the state of incarceration in a CoreCivic facility, not very well. And with CoreCivic growing with immigration imprisonment under the Trump administration, more people will experience what Bauer and others have chronicled: low-paid staff, nearly nonexistent hiring standard, inadequate training, lack of supplies, shortage of personnel, overcrowding, absence of even basic medical attention and mental health services, and other abuses of prisoners.

But not everybody suffers at the hands of CoreCivic and its ilk. Some profit quite handsomely, in fact. CoreCivic, for example, has proven a profitable investment for those invested in it. While publicly traded, this is not a company widely held by the public. Its investors include CoreCivic management and investment firms. And it appears, from a financial standpoint, quite a good use of capital. As of this writing, its market cap is $2.4 billion with a dividend yield of 8.8%. All this earned in the name of justice gone horribly awry.

Hopefully, Bauer’s book will be a wake up call to many Americans. Then again, we are a country that can’t face up to our terrible record on incarceration, a country that really has no idea how bad our prison situation is, and, worse, a country that doesn’t seem to care much. If Bauer’s book just nudged the awareness needle, well, that would be an accomplishment.… (más)

In 2014 Shane Bauer went to work undercover as a CO in a CCA prison in Louisiana for only $9/hr, and turned the piece into a lengthy exposé in Mother Jones. This book is an expansion and elaboration of that work--much of the direct experience was already published in MJ.

Here he expands it into a history of prisons and profit, and how the South in particular used convict labor as a new slavery, profiting off the labor of prisoners--increasingly black men. CCA was born from that legacy, and as its predecessors did, makes its profit at the expense of inmates. Public prisons are bad enough; CCAs are worse. Winn is understaffed, out of control, falsifies data to the state, provides inadequate medical care, and stopped providing recreational and work opportunities for inmates to save money.

It's not a pretty picture of the prison system.… (más)