American Prison: A Reporter’s Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment

“I began to read through their prison records and learned that many who had been in the hole for years had not committed violent offenses in prison Some were indeed dangerous gang members, while others were put in solitary because of people they hung out with, for their work as jailhouse lawyers, or because they possessed books on African American history.” 

As Bauer begins to reintegrate into society after his solitary confinement in Evin Prison, he examines the use of solitary in American prisons. Apart from the staggering number of inmates in solitary—more than anywhere else in the world—its use seems utterly arbitrary. Inmates are confined to solitary for the slightest infractions. Long-term solitary confinement is psychologically traumatic; Bauer describes some inmates’ minds as “broken” after years in “the hole.” It is evident that the primary order of business within any penal institution is compliance, and if that means locking away anyone who even might offer resistance, then so be it.

“Private prisons do not drive mass incarceration today; they merely profit from it.” 

In this simple sentence, Bauer succinctly articulates the root of the problem. However, the connection between profit and mass incarceration is a bit of a chicken and egg relationship. While it may be technically accurate to argue that the War on Drugs rather than profit causes mass incarceration, the profit motive has driven legislation that has made it easier to incarcerate large numbers of people, especially during the Jim Crow era. Which of these is the cause and which is the result may not be so clearly linear.

“Through the course of my digging, it has become clear that there has never been a time in American history in which companies or governments weren’t trying to make money from other people’s captivity.” 

Although private prisons are a relatively recent phenomenon, the relationship between profit and incarceration is not. The exception to the Thirteenth Amendment, which allows convicts to be used as slave labor, opened a door wide enough to perpetuate the abuses the amendment sought to eradicate. Not surprisingly, in a capitalist economy where profits trump everything, it would only be a matter of time before human bondage became a steady revenue stream.

“Hutto and his family settled into their plantation home in 1967. ‘All You Need Is Love’ by the Beatles was new hit, and the Huttos might have listened to it in their living room while their ‘houseboy’ cooked and served them.” 

When he assumed control of Texas’s Ramsey prison plantation, CCA cofounder T. Don Hutto moved into the prison’s plantation home, employing prisoners—usually Black prisoners—as servants to clean the house and babysit the children. It’s a scene that could have been from a century earlier, yet outside the bizarre time warp of the American South, social norms were shifting radically. Hippies were preaching peace and love, and the Beatles were changing rock and roll forever, but in Texas, Hutto was overseeing a vast network of prisoners still forced to pick cotton.

“But if we are going to hit an inmate, we should make sure to do it before he’s cuffed, he tells us, because once the cuffs are on, the window to ‘retaliate’ is closed. ‘But if you see me doin’ it, mind your own business.’” 

During training, Mr. Tucker, the head of Winn’s SORT team, explains the official rules for use of force. However, instead of training the cadets in ways to deescalate violence, he gives them tacit approval to use force, albeit within certain parameters so CCA avoids lawsuits. Much of what Tucker teaches is accompanied by a wink and a nod, the implication being that anything is okay if you can get away with it.

“He lectures us on CCA’s principle of cost effectiveness, which requires us to ‘provide honest and fair, competitive pricing to our partners and deliver value to our shareholders.’” 

Kenny makes sure every cadet understands that CCA is a business, and it must be run like one. Beneath the corporate jargon and promise of value, however, is a dirty little secret. In order to fulfill its corporate mission, CCA cuts corners to the detriment of its staff and its inmates. Pay is barely above the minimum wage, morale is low, the prison infrastructure is badly in need of repair, and any programs designed for rehabilitation have been cut. The Darwinian reality of capitalism drives Winn in a race to the bottom.

“In the perfect marriage of fiscal and tough-on-crime conservatism, the companies would fund and construct new lockups while the courts would keep them full.” 

Ford or General Motors would never try to sell cars in a city with no roads or drivers, and starting a private prison company without bodies to fill the cells would be just as foolhardy. While Reagan’s War on Drugs predated CCA’s founding by a few years, Hutto and his partners saw the writing on the wall and jumped at the opportunity. With the potential for hundreds of thousands of men and women to suddenly be locked up, lots of brand-new human warehouses would have to be built, staffed, and operated. Capitalism rushes to fill a void, a useful advantage if it means building a better car or a providing faster internet; but capitalism’s moral relativism doesn’t distinguish between cars and people. Human beings have to do that, but as history shows, they frequently don’t.

“For the first time in the history of the world, imprisonment became the regular mode of punishment for the majority of crimes, and in almost every state, incarceration meant forced labor for private contractors.” 

Even before the Civil War, the trend of using inmates for forced labor had begun. This was a sea change from the previous practice of short-term jail and public punishment, especially once states saw the opportunity for profit. While outside observers like Alexis de Tocqueville sanctioned the harsh punishments that accompanied long-term incarceration because “it effects the immediate submission of the delinquent” (60), even he had the foresight to predict the problems of privatization. Private contractors, he argued, would seek to profit only themselves at the expense of those in their charge, an ironic bit of empathy from one who approved the use of the lash.

“For taking a broom out of a closet at the wrong time, this inmate will stay in prison an extra thirty days, for which CCA will be paid more than $1,000.” 

At Winn’s “inmate court,” a haphazard judicial proceeding without any real legal standing, an inmate is sentenced to an extra thirty days for sweeping the rec area during an unauthorized time. This outcome is reached despite his claim that a CO approved it. The arbitrary punishment carries a strong implication: The “judge” understands the importance of profit and takes unfair advantage of a simple misunderstanding to generate a little extra cash.

“‘The community should never derive benefit from crimes,’ one correspondent said during a debate over the penitentiary in North Carolina, ‘because that makes it directly interested in their continuance and increase.’” 

As penitentiaries expanded in the North and more gradually in the South, arguments and counterarguments echoed in state houses and the news media. While some Southerners balked at the penitentiary’s egalitarianism, fearful of white prisoners being forced into hard labor alongside Black prisoners, others doubted the profit motive. As far back as the 1820s, skeptics sounded the alarm over the obvious conflict of interest between profit and incarceration, an alarm that has not been heeded 200 years later.

“‘If a profit of several thousand dollars can be made on the labor of twenty slaves,’ posited the Telegraph and Texas Register, ‘why may not a similar profit be made on the labor of twenty convicts?’”

As states saw the potential for profit from convict labor, the moral boundary between enslaved and incarcerated was erased altogether. Penitentiaries were no longer environments for atonement and rehabilitation; instead, they became the new plantations, albeit new in name only. Nothing substantive had changed: Labor was forced under the threat of harsh punishment, and states reaped the rewards. The lack of distinction between enslavement and incarceration was convenient for legislators and entrepreneurs looking to justify their new wealth.

“We take comfort in the notion of an unbridgeable gulf between good and evil, but maybe we should understand, as Zimbardo’s work suggested, the evil is incremental—something we are all capable of given the right circumstances.” 

Shortly after 9/11, George W. Bush famously referred to Iran, Iraq, and North Korea as the “Axis of Evil,” implicitly placing the United States in opposition, on the “good” side of the divide. This kind of rhetoric is pervasive in social and political discourse, especially in a country that reduces complex issues to “good guys” and “bad guys.” As Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment suggests, however, the gulf between the good guys and the bad guys may not be as wide as many Americans like to think. If students, fully aware they are play acting, or correctional officers who imagine themselves performing a civic duty can so easily step across the moral line and, in the words of media critic Marshall McLuhan, “become what we’ve beheld,” then perhaps the worst of society are not so different from the rest of it.

“Writer George Washington Cable, in an 1885 analysis of convict leasing, wrote that the system ‘springs primarily from the idea that the possession of a convict’s person is an opportunity for the State to make money; that the amount to be made is whatever can be wrung from him; that for the officers of the State to waive this opportunity is to impose upon the clemency of a tax-paying public; and that, without regard to moral or mortal consequences, the penitentiary whose annual report shows the largest case balance paid into the State’s treasury is the best penitentiary.’” 

Cable’s detailed analysis dispassionately examines the motives and mechanisms of convict leasing. It suggests that, with the opportunity for profit from the forced labor of convicts, the state has a fiduciary responsibility to take advantage of that labor, and that doing otherwise would betray the public trust. He also acknowledges that, if profit is the motive, then the state will inevitably squeeze the maximum labor out of every inmate by any means necessary. Using profit as the sole metric, therefore, the most successful penitentiary is the one that generates the most revenue even if it requires beatings and torture. Unfortunately, Cable’s analysis was proven accurate time and time again.

“Before the war, we owned the negroes. If a man had a good negro, he could afford to take care of him: if he was sick get a doctor. He might even put gold plugs in his teeth. But these convicts: we don’t own ‘em. One dies, get another.” 

The death rate among convict laborers, Bauer points out, was comparable to that in the infamous Soviet gulags. Since the lessees did not own the prisoners, they had no incentive to provide for their well-being. In this sort of twisted reasoning, a slave was an investment, but a convict was little more than a machine to be discarded when its use had been exhausted. Even a horse might be retired to a pasture to live out its final days in peace, but convicts were afforded no such treatment. If an inmate couldn’t fill his quota, he was beaten—in some cases, to death—and then replaced like an old shoe.

“‘They always talking about prison rehabilitates you,’ he says. ‘Prison don’t rehabilitate you. You have to rehabilitate yourself.’” 

As Corner Store laments the current state of the prison system, he recognizes one obvious truth: “rehabilitation” is little more than a public relations catchphrase. Prisons, especially those under the management of private contractors, can barely maintain order let alone achieve a goal of rehabilitation. That takes staff and resources, two things that don’t fit into CCA’s business model. It’s a far cry from Malcolm X’s Charlestown Prison, an institution that valued inmates for the development of their minds and character, not for how much money the institution could earn from warehousing them.

“I believe that pain increases the intelligence of the stupid and if inmates want to act stupid, then we’ll give them some pain to help increase their intelligence level.” 

When CCA’s national SORT team—a group that “’use[s] force constantly’” (145)—assumes control of Winn’s suicide watch, Assistant Warden Parker justifies the decision by arguing that pain is an effective motivator. His joking tone belies the underlying sadism that corrupts so many in the prison industry—the same sadism that has justified so much abuse over so many decades. While the lash and the sweat box have been replaced by chemical spray and solitary, the power dynamics that make these abuses such a ready first option have not changed.

“Yet according to a report by Alabama’s inspector of convicts, the high mortality rates were based not on the conditions of their incarceration but on the ‘debased moral condition of the negro…whose systems are poisoned beyond medical aid by the loathsome diseases incident to the unrestrained indulgence of lust…now that they are deprived of the control and care of a master.’” 

In the late 1800s, conditions in convict labor camps were so severe and mortality rates so high that a state health inspector described them as unfit for a “population of human creatures” (151). However, another report paints a completely different picture, one which twists reasoning beyond all recognition in order to allow the camps to remain open. The report relies on racist stereotypes of Black men as disease vectors with uncontrollable libidos who cannot manage themselves unless under the management of an owner. Such distorted logic plays well in the minds of a public predisposed to believe it.

“Just because I have twenty years left in prison doesn’t mean that I’m nonexistent and that I don’t matter.” 

Prior to Damien Coestly’s suicide, he battled CCA bureaucracy for years to get mental health assistance. In his frustration and desperation, he utters a simple and plaintive appeal to anyone who might listen. This appeal represents the collective cry of millions of incarcerated souls who demand only dignity while paying their debt to society.

“But people like Tattoo Face mistake kindness for weakness. How do I find the middle ground between appearing soft and being draconian?” 

Bauer’s moral dilemma throughout his four-month tenure at Winn is about more than just how tough or how nice to be. It’s a conflict between his identity as a reformatory progressive and his need to survive. As a former prisoner and someone who believes in everyone’s basic humanity, he struggles with all the taunts and threats. One the one hand, he tries to dismiss them as the frustrations of a group of people who have been powerless for most of their lives and are trying to reclaim at least a shred of that power; but on the other hand, he responds as any human would—with anger. In the end, the only way for Bauer to resolve this conflict is to leave.

“The notion that forced labor was reformatory was as old as the original Protestant penitentiaries, but like convict leasing, the chain gang was first and foremost an institution driven by financial consideration.”

As convict leasing was replaced by the more “humanitarian” roadwork of chain gangs, the media and political spin machines continued to justify this forced labor by glorifying its health benefits. Getting convicts out into the open air to work on infrastructure projects, they argued, was far superior to holding them idly in cells. The missing part of this analysis was the fact that states were still reaping the benefits of unpaid labor and the laborers were still being treated as less than human.

“Prisoners tell us they understand we are powerless to change these high-level management problems. Yet the two groups remain locked in battle like soldiers in a war they don’t believe in.” 

“Soldiers” is an apt metaphor in this case. Wars—the war on drugs or the war on crime, for example—are fought by foot soldiers manipulated by the ruling elite—in this case, the CEOs of private prison companies. The grunts are COs like Bacle and inmates like Derik who battle for territory and respect while Hutto, Beasley, and Crants collect the rewards. Like soldiers in a conventional war who question its political motives, they are powerless to stop the bloodshed. Ironically, the COs may have more in common with the inmates than they do with any of CCA’s top brass.

“In Arkansas, Hutto would master the skill that would later make him rich: how to adapt the prison business just enough to suit the times while making it even more profitable than it had been under the old regime.” 

In the wake of Tom Murton’s reformatory measures in Arkansas—measures that lowered profits and subsequently led to his dismissal—T. Don Hutto was hired to run the state’s prison system. Hutto’s main qualification as far as Arkansas was concerned was his ability to turn a profit. But the state could no longer tolerate the abuses of previous administrators, so Hutto found a middle ground: mechanization. By dragging the prison labor complex into the modern industrial age, Hutto was able to make the operation more efficient and therefore more profitable. His efficiency, however, did not make the operation any more humane, and abuses continued despite his noble pretensions.

“When CCA went public in 1986, its initial public offering stated that ‘the company can reduce its exposure to civil rights claims by having the Company’s facilities satisfy ACA standards.’” 

In a bid to lure investors, CCA offers not a promise of rehabilitation, efficiency, or even basic humanity but rather a shield against litigation. Implicit in this promise are both an assumption that dismissing civil rights lawsuits is a good thing and also that ACA standards actually mean something. According to Bauer, the ACA’s accreditation is little more than a rubber stamp from a trade association rife with conflicts of interest. Hutto served as president of the ACA while simultaneously running CCA and lobbying for the private prison industry.

“If anyone deserves to be in prison, I think, Derik does.” 

Bauer’s relationship with Derik Johnson is complex. On the one hand, Johnson appears friendly, advising Bauer and helping him navigate the minefield of inmate-guard relations. On the other hand, however, Derik occasionally reveals a terrifying malice, even equating killing to “a football game” (238). His emotionally detached description of murder and his not-so-veiled threats against Bauer convinces the reporter that some people are beyond rehabilitation. It’s a startling admission given Bauer’s earlier hopes that Derik might be the one inmate he could truly trust.