One of Boston Globe’s Best Books of 2018
One of San Francisco Chronicle’s 10 Best Books of 2018
One of Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books of 2018
Featured in Mother Jones’ Favorite Nonfiction of 2018
“American Prison reprises [Bauer’s] page-turning narrative [as reported in Mother Jones], and adds not only the fascinating back story of CCA, the nation’s first private prison company, but also an eye-opening examination of the history of corrections as a profit-making enterprise . . . Bauer is a generous narrator with a nice ear for detail, and his colleagues come across as sympathetic characters, with a few notable exceptions . . . The sheer number of forehead-slapping quotes from Bauer’s superiors and fellow guards alone are worth the price of admission.” —The New York Times Book Review
“American Prison is both the remarkable story of a journalist who spent four months working as a corrections officer, and a horrifying exposé of how prisoners were treated by a corporation that profited from them. . . . It’s Bauer’s investigative chops, though, that make American Prison so essential. He dedicated his time at Winn to talking with prisoners and guards, who were unaware that he was a journalist . . . Based on his first-hand experience and these conversations, he paints a damning picture of prisoner mistreatment and under-staffing at the prison, where morale among the incarcerated and the employees was poor. The stories he tells are deeply sad and consistently infuriating . . . An enraging, necessary look at the private prison system, and a convincing clarion call for prison reform.” —NPR.org
“A relentless and uncompromising book, one that takes a crowbar to the private prison industry and yanks hard, letting just enough daylight slip inside to illuminate the contours of the beast . . . The private prison industry is booming once again. To find out what that means for real people—both those who guard and those who are guarded—American Prison is the place to begin.” —San Francisco Chronicle
“[Bauer] exposes the extreme inhumanity and myriad abuses perpetrated by the American prison system—problems that effect both prisoners and guards. A terrifying look into one of America’s darkest and deepest ongoing embarrassments.” —LitHub
“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
“The searing details of [Bauer’s] 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
10/15/2018
With the support of his editors at Mother Jones, investigative journalist Bauer spent four months working as a corrections officer at the private, for-profit Corrections Corporation of America prison in Winnfield, LA, in order to document the daily reality of incarceration in this country. This work weaves that experience with the long history of for-profit incarceration in the United States, a history that grew alongside chattel slavery and eventually replaced it as the nation's primary source of unfree labor. In addition to documenting the abuse of inmates, widespread and encouraged by management-level employees, this book also exposes how the majority of prison staff also live on the economic margins, vulnerable to exploitation by their employer. Bauer's work is effectively informed by his own arrest and 26 months of incarceration while on assignment in Iran. VERDICT Bauer tells a powerful story at a moment when Americans are asking hard questions about the use and abuse of incarceration. This informative book will surely find many passionate readers.—Anna J. Clutterbuck-Cook, Massachusetts Historical Soc., Boston
★ 2018-05-28
A penetrating exposé on the cruelty and mind-bending corruption of privately run prisons across the United States, with a focus on the Winn facility in Louisiana.That prison was operated by the Corrections Corporation of America, but after a shorter version of this book appeared in Mother Jones, the company rebranded as CoreCivic and lost the Winn contract with the government. Bauer (co-author: A Sliver of Light: Three Americans Imprisoned in Iran, 2014), who has won the National Magazine Award in addition to many others, spent four months inside the prison as a corrections officer, carrying out an undercover journalism assignment to find the truth behind CCA's documented record of lies about its practices. At least 8 percent of inmates in state prisons must adjust to the practices of laxly regulated private companies rather than those in government-run facilities. At Winn, correctional officers (a term they prefer to "guard") risk their safety every day for $9 per hour. Bauer determined that the guards, most of them unarmed, were outnumbered by the inmates by a ratio as high as 200 to 1. The author had also viewed prison from a different perspective, having been incarcerated for two years in Tehran's notorious Evin Prison because he had unwittingly crossed a border while hiking as a tourist. Despite the awful conditions in his Iranian cell, Bauer found many of the conditions in Louisiana to be even worse. Nearly every page of this tale contains examples of shocking inhumanity. During his four months at Winn, Bauer also noticed a cruelty streak developing in his own character; even some of the inmates told Bauer that he was changing, and not for the better. Interspersed with the chapters about Winn, Bauer includes historical context—e.g., after the end of the Civil War, states continued slavery by a different name, forcing prisoners to pick cotton and perform other grueling tasks that produced income for prison administrations.A potent, necessary broadside against incarceration in the U.S., which "imprisons a higher portion of its population than any country in the world."
