{"id":1243,"date":"2019-01-23T17:46:29","date_gmt":"2019-01-23T23:46:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/staging\/1734\/?p=1243"},"modified":"2019-01-23T17:46:29","modified_gmt":"2019-01-23T23:46:29","slug":"prisoners-of-profit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/prisoners-of-profit\/","title":{"rendered":"Prisoners of Profit"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Cover photo provided by Random House<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It is hard to know where to start in describing why the privatization\nof prisons is a terrible idea. The effective abandonment of public responsibility\nfor the fate and welfare of people sentenced to incarceration after being convicted\nof various crimes\u2014some of whom, in recent years, have been exonerated because of\nrevelations of sloppy or corrupt police work\u2014should speak deeply to the\nconscience. Apparently, in some legislative circles, however, money counts for more.\nThe lobby for private prisons has made headway over time at both the federal\nand state levels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To find out whether and how private prisons are particularly\ndysfunctional, Shane Bauer<\/a>, a senior\nreporter for Mother Jones<\/a><\/em>, went undercover at Winn\nPrison<\/a> in Louisiana, an operation of Corrections Corporation of America<\/a> (CCA)\nunder contract with the state. Not totally undercover, mind you. He used his own\nname, and had CCA checked him out as he applied for a $9-per-hour job as a\ncorrections officer, they might have wondered why someone with his background would\nwant to work there. But CCA has a problem. Guards working just above minimum\nwage tend not to last long, and CCA needs bodies in uniforms, so the hiring process\nappears less than diligent. He was hired easily and worked at Winn for four\nmonths before it was time to leave. But more on that later. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the record: Guards at public prisons in Louisiana, Bauer\nreports, started at $12.50 an hour. Not a lot, but almost 40 percent more than\nCCA was paying. Undoubtedly with better benefits. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let me state at the outset that the resulting book, American Prison\u00a0<\/a><\/em>(Penguin Press, 2018), which follows his reporting in Mother Jones<\/em>, is not my normal reading. Regular followers of this blog can figure out what I like to read, for the most part. But I am currently a judge in adult nonfiction for a book awards contest for the Society of Midland Authors<\/a>, so this and many others arrived at my doorstep, day after day, until the deadline arrived earlier this month. Prisons, correctional policy, and the business of punishment are well outside my areas of expertise, and I am glad of that, but I know a book that demands public attention when I see one. This one will be an eye-opening experience even for some cynics. It will also be heart-wrenching for anyone with a moral core or a sense of human decency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before I delve into the details, I must express my admiration\nfor Bauer\u2019s courage in even undertaking this project. For one thing, he had\nprior experience with prisons\u2014as an inmate. Several years ago, while Bauer was covering\nthe Middle East, he and two friends, Josh Fattal<\/a> and Sarah Shourd<\/a>, went hiking and wandered\ntoo close to the Iranian border in Kurdish Iraq<\/a>. All\nthree were arrested. He was taken to the notorious Evin\nprison<\/a>, where he spent considerable time in isolation before his eventual\nrelease. Shourd was released after about a year in a separate prison. That\nexperience might very justifiably have kept most other people from even considering\nworking in a prison, but Bauer has instead developed a commitment to prison\nreform. Meanwhile, the CEO of CCA, Damon\nHininger<\/a>, earned $4 million in 2018, according to Bauer, 20 times the\nsalary of the director of the Federal Bureau of\nPrisons<\/a>. Just sayin\u2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bauer does not simply relate his experiences at Winn Prison.\nHe has done his homework on the history of making money from prisons and prison\nlabor. He points out that many immigrants to the American colonies were convicts\nexported from England as indentured servants<\/a>.\nMany fortunes in the United States, sometimes vast fortunes, have been built on\nfree (meaning forced) labor from slaves and convicts. But the business of\nprison labor being used for profit took wing mostly after the Civil War, when\nthe 13th<\/sup>\nAmendment<\/a> abolished slavery with one loophole: \u201cexcept as punishment for a\ncrime.\u201d The opportunity to convict multitudes of African-Americans, as well as\na fair number of hapless poor whites, for even minor crimes, opened the door\nfor leasing convict labor. That, in turn, led to horrific conditions as\nlegislatures, especially in the South, sought ways to reduce the costs of penitentiaries\nby making them profitable\u2014thus, the institution of the prison farm, and later,\nchain gangs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That conditions were often horrid on plantations and chain\ngangs is beyond dispute. Bauer provides ample statistics and documentation including\nlarge percentages of deaths in places like Alabama. But individual stories sometimes\noften serve better to illustrate the moral degradation of prisons for profit.\nBauer supplies us with the once infamous case of Martin Tabert<\/a>, a white,\n22-year-old middle-class kid from North Dakota who in 1921 set out to tour the\ncountry as a personal adventure. He ran out of money in Florida, between odd\njobs along the way, and was arrested and pulled off a train by the sheriff for\nnot having a ticket. Tabert wired his family for money, but before it arrived,\nhe was sold off to the Putnam Lumber Company for three months of work in a\nturpentine camp. He worked all day in swamp water in \u201ctattered shoes that didn\u2019t\nfit.\u201d When he had an aching groin and lagged behind other convicts, the \u201cwhipping\nboss\u201d made him lie on the ground for thirty lashes in front of the other\nconvicts. After additional beating and being hit over the head with a strap, he\ndied the following night. The company sent a note to his family saying he died\nof fever. Not satisfied with the explanation, the family convinced the North\nDakota state attorney to go to Florida to investigate. His findings, including the\ncompany\u2019s agreement to pay the sheriff $20 for each prisoner he sent to them,\nproduced a major scandal, a lawsuit, and an investigation by the Florida\nlegislature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of that highlights the fact that, for decades, some\nstates wavered between episodes of investigation and reform and a desire to limit\nthe prison budget and make the penal system earn money. One might think that,\nin more enlightened times, we might get past that sort of moral cowardice and\ncome to terms with public responsibilities to provide opportunities for at\nleast the less violent or nonviolent prisoners to make amends, acquire skills,\nand rehabilitate themselves for participation in what we might hope would\nbecome a less dangerous society. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But private prisons, and major problems even at public\nprisons, persist because America has not yet moved beyond moral indifference\nand hard-nosed, but short-sighted notions like \u201cthrow away the key.\u201d I do not\nsay that to minimize the very real challenges involved in incarcerating felons\nin the first place. Bauer himself, as he details his experiences as a\ncorrections officer at Winn, confronts much of the moral ambivalence of handling\nsuch responsibilities, including the head games and manipulation in which prisoners\noften engaged at his expense. The moral turmoil of maintaining control of a\npotentially violent setting is significant, but it also serves to underscore\nthe moral turpitude of trying to do so in a private prison staffed by guards\nwho are earning barely above the minimum wage. That, of course, cuts costs, as\ndoes minimizing medical care for inmates and many other short cuts. Bauer plies\nus with statistics including comparisons of suicide rates between public and\nprivate prisons. But again, a personal story highlights a major problem. Bauer\ntells of one inmate, Damien Coestly, who hangs himself. His suicide is not\nreported by CCA, he tells us, because he died in the hospital, not at the\nprison. Never mind that the scenario played out at the prison. Just get the guy out of our prison before he\ndies on our watch. <\/em>Good grief.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, at some point, you know this whole undercover operation\nmust end. I will not spoil the story for you, nor even share how he got so much\ninformation out of the prison on a daily basis. But the epilogue details how and\nwhen he decided the time had come to pack up and leave, reporting his resignation\nby phone from the safety of neighboring Texas. Just read it. It is high drama, making\nBauer\u2019s subsequent arrival at the annual shareholders meeting of CCA in\nNashville almost anticlimactic, but revealing, nonetheless. If this book does\nnot affect your outlook on the whole subject of incarceration for profit, I\nswear, there is something wrong with you. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jim Schwab<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is hard to know where to start in describing why the privatization of prisons is a terrible idea. The effective abandonment of public responsibility for the fate and welfare of people sentenced to incarceration after being convicted of various crimes\u2014some of whom, in recent years, have been exonerated because of revelations of sloppy or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1244,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[13,504,178,63,189,120,1,130],"tags":[1220,1226,1228,1233,1221,1230,1232,1135,1223,1234,1229,1222,1227],"class_list":["post-1243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-crime","category-government","category-history","category-journalism","category-public-safety","category-uncategorized","category-writing-2","tag-american-prison","tag-convict-labor","tag-corrections-corporation-of-america","tag-damien-coestly","tag-evin","tag-josh-fattal","tag-martin-tabert","tag-mother-jones","tag-private-prison","tag-rehabilitation","tag-sarah-shourd","tag-shane-bauer","tag-undercover"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1243"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1243\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1245,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1243\/revisions\/1245"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}