02870cam a2200277 i 4500 355121555 TxAuBib 20180924120000.0 180430s2018||||||||||||||||||||||||eng|u 2018018293 9780735223585 28.00 0735223580 28.00 eng rda TxAuBib rda Bauer, Shane. American prison [BOOK] : a reporter's undercover journey into the business of punishment / Shane Bauer. New York City : Penguin Press, 2018. 351 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, map ; 25 cm. txt rdacontent n rdamedia nc rdacarrier Includes bibliographical references and index. In 2014, Shane Bauer was hired for $9 an hour to work as an entry-level prison guard at aprivate 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 expose 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 thelarger 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. Provided by publisher. 20180924. Imprisonment United States. Prisons United States.