American Prison

A Reporter's Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment

By: Shane Bauer

Narrated by: James Fouhey, Shane Bauer

"An enraging, necessary look at the private prison system, and a convincing clarion call for prison reform.” (NPR.org)

New York Times Book Review 10 Best Books of 2018

One of President Barack Obama’s favorite books of 2018

Winner of the 2019 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize

Winner of the Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism

Winner of the 2019 RFK Book and Journalism Award

A New York Times Notable Book

A groundbreaking and brave inside reckoning with the nexus of prison and profit in America in one Louisiana prison and over the course of our country's history.

In 2014, Shane Bauer was hired for nine dollars an hour to work as an entry-level prison guard at a private 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 exposé 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 the larger 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.

©2018 Shane Bauer (P)2018 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

“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 firsthand 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)

• 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

Dark, entertaining, and informative.

Quite possibly one of the most entertaining non-fiction books I’ve ever read. A glimpse into the twisted world of the American prison system that will throw you into an emotional whirlwind of anger, sadness, and hopelessness.

An important read if we are ever going to fix this deeply broken piece of our society. We have 4% of the world’s population yet 1/4 of its prisoners. The goal seems to be to make prison profitable, not to rehabilitate criminals. If you are a true patriot and care about the USA, you’ll read this book!

The narration is very well done also.

Intense

Enjoyable, interesting, intense. Once I started listening on Audible, I couldn’t stop until I was completely finished. A bit too much detail on the history of U.S. prisons, but all in all satisfying. Great work by the author on exposing the truth about private prisons in America.

A history of slavery and an explanation of how it continues.

This is an insiders account of how corrupted and despicable the American prison system is.

Everything is a commodity. Everything is a for-profit venture in a system as parasitic as ours.

Other countries such as Norway genuinely try to rehabilitate their criminals. America only seems them as yet another source of profit.

Don’t turn away. Read. We must understand how the system works if we are to fight it.

Hard to listen to

I trust that the information in this book that goes beyond the author’s first hand experience was researched and is accurate. - I have no reason to believe otherwise but haven’t done the homework myself. It’s hard to believe that people can be so cruel and hard to listen to but something we all need to know.

Disheartening but real

I really appreciated the way he weaved the history of the penal system in with his story; it really gave such a broad perspective. It’s incredible how he had both a prisoner and warden mindset. Absolutely a must-read.

A story that needs to be told

This is a brave book. The writer taking his life in his hands to tell a story that would be difficult to tell from the inmates perspective.

I heard a man speak at a law school. He was a 'white collar criminal' of the low hanging fruit type. He saw what he thought was an opportunity and took it. He ended up with 18 months. Some of the things that Mr.. Bauer reports in his book are corroborated in the story I heard the WCC speak of.

A complete recipe of misery cooked to perfection

The book is an incredibly balanced report of the conditions at a for profit prison and a focused accounting of the history of incarceration in the United States. The narrator handles the material spot on and the book flows like a novel. Bravo!

It's a scary book.

Shane Bauer was brutally honest - that's why I recommend the book. He describes prison conditions and how it shaped his character in 4 short months. Prison immersion changes people, believe it.

Government allows private prisons because they're cheaper, plain and simple. By the end of the book, one understands this forward and backward.

The book gives a window into how things actually work in private prisons, the cold logic that prevails while most of the rest falls off. It's difficult for the mind to reconcile such differences, but one learns to accept them.

The scary thing is how the historical sections of the book don't support any reason to hope things are going to get better.

Wow!

This is an amazing investigative journey. The way the author gives historical lesson while he works as an undercover guard is fantastic. He takes a gut wrenching look at the history of warehousing people for money.

Abolish private prisons now!

This book is a fascinating, brutal and hard to put down look into private prisons. The impression it left on me will be hard to shake. CCA/Core Civic, GEO group, and their peers are evil.