My 4 months as a prison guard in Louisiana

Discussion in 'Law & Justice' started by Margot2, Jun 26, 2016.

  1. Margot2

    Margot2 Banned

    Joined:
    Sep 9, 2013
    Messages:
    73,644
    Likes Received:
    13,766
    Trophy Points:
    113
    This is not an easy read especially if you have a weak stomach .. Note the investors and how much money they make .

    Chapter 1: "Inmates Run This (*)(*)(*)(*)(*)"


    Have you ever had a riot?" I ask a recruiter from a prison run by the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA).

    "The last riot we had was two years ago," he says over the phone.
    "Yeah, but that was with the Puerto Ricans!" says a woman's voice, cutting in. "We got rid of them."

    "When can you start?" the man asks.
    I tell him I need to think it over.

    I take a breath. Am I really going to become a prison guard? Now that it might actually happen, it feels scary and a bit extreme.

    Read Why Our Reporter Worked at a Prison
    From the editor: Why we sent a reporter to work as a private prison guard

    I started applying for jobs in private prisons because I wanted to see the inner workings of an industry that holds 131,000 of the nation's 1.6 million prisoners. As a journalist, it's nearly impossible to get an unconstrained look inside our penal system. When prisons do let reporters in, it's usually for carefully managed tours and monitored interviews with inmates.

    Private prisons are especially secretive. Their records often aren't subject to public access laws; CCA has fought to defeat legislation that would make private prisons subject to the same disclosure rules as their public counterparts.

    And even if I could get uncensored information from private prison inmates, how would I verify their claims? I keep coming back to this question: Is there any other way to see what really happens inside a private prison?

    CCA certainly seemed eager to give me a chance to join its team. Within two weeks of filling out its online application, using my real name and personal information, several CCA prisons contacted me, some multiple times.

    They weren't interested in the details of my résumé. They didn't ask about my job history, my current employment with the Foundation for National Progress, the publisher of Mother Jones, or why someone who writes about criminal justice in California would want to move across the country to work in a prison. They didn't even ask about the time I was arrested for shoplifting when I was 19.

    When I call Winn Correctional Center in Winnfield, Louisiana, the HR lady who answers is chipper and has a smoky Southern voice. "I should tell you upfront that the job only pays $9 an hour, but the prison is in the middle of a national forest. Do you like to hunt and fish?"

    "I like fishing."

    "Well, there is plenty of fishing, and people around here like to hunt squirrels. You ever squirrel hunt?"

    "No."

    "Well, I think you'll like Louisiana. I know it's not a lot of money, but they say you can go from a CO to a warden in just seven years! The CEO of the company started out as a CO"—a corrections officer.

    Ultimately, I choose Winn. Not only does Louisiana have the highest incarceration rate in the world—more than 800 prisoners per 100,000 residents—but Winn is the oldest privately operated medium-security prison in the country.

    I phone HR and tell her I'll take the job.

    "Well, poop can stick!" she says.

    I pass the background check within 24 hours.

    Two weeks later, in November 2014, having grown a goatee, pulled the plugs from my earlobes, and bought a beat-up Dodge Ram pickup, I pull into Winnfield, a hardscrabble town of 4,600 people three hours north of Baton Rouge. I drive past the former Mexican restaurant that now serves drive-thru daiquiris to people heading home from work, and down a street of collapsed wooden houses, empty except for a tethered dog.

    About 38 percent of households here live below the poverty line; the median household income is $25,000. Residents are proud of the fact that three governors came from Winnfield. They are less proud that the last sheriff was locked up for dealing meth.

    Thirteen miles away, Winn Correctional Center lies in the middle of the Kisatchie National Forest, 600,000 acres of Southern yellow pines crosshatched with dirt roads. As I drive through the thick forest, the prison emerges from the fog. You might mistake the dull expanse of cement buildings and corrugated metal sheds for an oddly placed factory were it not for the office-park-style sign displaying CCA's corporate logo, with the head of a bald eagle inside the "A."

    At the entrance, a guard who looks about 60, a gun on her hip, asks me to turn off my truck, open the doors, and step out. A tall, stern-faced man leads a German shepherd into the cab of my truck. My heart hammers. I tell the woman I'm a new cadet, here to start my four weeks of training. She directs me to a building just outside the prison fence.

    "Have a good one, baby," she says as I pull through the gate. I exhale.


    I park, find the classroom, and sit down with five other students.

    "You nervous?" a 19-year-old black guy asks me. I'll call him Reynolds. (I've changed the names and nicknames of the people I met in prison unless noted otherwise.)

    "A little," I say. "You?"


    CCA RUNS 61 FACILITIES ACROSS THE UNITED STATES:
    These include 34 state prisons, 14 federal prisons, 9 immigration detention centers, and 4 jails.
    It owns 50 of these sites.
    38 hold men, 2 hold women, 21 holds women and children.
    17 are in Texas, 7 are in Tennessee, and 6 are in Arizona.

    "Nah, I been around," he says. "I seen killin'. My uncle killed three people. My brother been in jail, and my cousin." He has scars on his arms. One, he says, is from a shootout in Baton Rouge. The other is from a street fight in Winnfield. He elbowed someone in the face, and the next thing he knew he got knifed from behind. "It was some gang (*)(*)(*)(*)." He says he just needs a job until he starts college in a few months. He has a baby to feed. He also wants to put speakers in his truck. They told him he could work on his days off, so he'll probably come in every day. "That will be a fat paycheck." He puts his head down on the table and falls asleep.

    The human resources director comes in and scolds Reynolds for napping. He perks up when she tells us that if we recruit a friend to work here, we'll get 500 bucks. She gives us an assortment of other tips: Don't eat the food given to inmates; don't have sex with them or you could be fined $10,000 or get 10 years at hard labor; try not to get sick because we don't get paid sick time. If we have friends or relatives incarcerated here, we need to report it. She hands out fridge magnets with the number of a hotline to use if we feel suicidal or start fighting with our families. We get three counseling sessions for free.

    I studiously jot down notes as the HR director fires up a video of the company's CEO, Damon Hininger, who tells us what a great opportunity it is to be a corrections officer at CCA. Once a guard himself, he made $3.4 million in 2015, nearly 19 times the salary of the director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. "You may be brand new to CCA," Hininger says, "but we need you. We need your enthusiasm. We need your bright ideas. During the academy, I felt camaraderie. I felt a little anxiety too. That is completely normal. The other thing I felt was tremendous excitement."

    I look around the room. Not one person—not the recent high school graduate, not the former Walmart manager, not the nurse, not the mother of twins who's come back to Winn after 10 years of McDonald's and a stint in the military—looks excited.

    "I don't think this is for me," a postal worker says.

    "Do not run!"

    The next day, I wake up at 6 a.m. in my apartment in the nearby town where I decided to live to minimize my chances of running into off-duty guards. I feel a shaky, electric nervousness as I put a pen that doubles as an audio recorder into my shirt pocket.

    In class that day, we learn about the use of force. A middle-aged black instructor I'll call Mr. Tucker comes into the classroom, his black fatigues tucked into shiny black boots. He's the head of Winn's Special Operations Response Team, or SORT, the prison's SWAT-like tactical unit. "If an inmate was to spit in your face, what would you do?" he asks. Some cadets say they would write him up. One woman, who has worked here for 13 years and is doing her annual retraining, says, "I would want to hit him. Depending on where the camera is, he might would get hit."

    Mr. Tucker pauses to see if anyone else has a response. "If your personality if somebody spit on you is to knock the (*)(*)(*)(*) out of him, you gonna knock the (*)(*)(*)(*) out of him," he says, pacing slowly. "If a inmate hit me, I'm go' hit his ass right back. I don't care if the camera's rolling. If a inmate spit on me, he's gonna have a very bad day."

    Mr. Tucker says we should call for backup in any confrontation. "If a midget spit on you, guess what? You still supposed to call for backup. You don't supposed to ever get into a one-on-one encounter with anybody. Period. Whether you can take him or not. Hell, if you got a problem with a midget, call me. I'll help you. Me and you can whup the hell out of him."


    continued

    http://www.motherjones.com/politics...tions-corporation-inmates-investigation-bauer

    - - - Updated - - -

    Here's another excerpt:

    There is much about the history of CCA the video does not teach. The idea of privatizing prisons originated in the early 1980s with Beasley and fellow businessman Doctor Robert Crants. The two had no experience in corrections, so they recruited Hutto, who had been the head of Virginia's and Arkansas' prisons. In a 1978 ruling, the Supreme Court had found that a succession of Arkansas prison administrations, including Hutto's, "tried to operate their prisons at a profit." Guards on horseback herded the inmates, who sometimes did not have shoes, to the fields. The year after Hutto joined CCA, he became the head of the American Correctional Association, the largest prison association in the world.

    To Beasley, the former chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party, the business of private prisons was simple: "You just sell it like you were selling cars, or real estate, or hamburgers," he told Inc. magazine in 1988. Beasley and Crants ran the business a lot like a hotel chain, charging the government a daily rate for each inmate. Early investors included Sodexho-Marriott and the venture capitalist Jack Massey, who helped build Kentucky Fried Chicken, Wendy's, and the Hospital Corporation of America.

    The 1980s were a good time to get into the incarceration business. The prison population was skyrocketing, the drug war was heating up, the length of sentences was increasing, and states were starting to mandate that prisoners serve at least 85 percent of their terms. Between 1980 and 1990, state spending on prisons quadrupled, but it wasn't enough. Prisons in many states were filled beyond capacity.

    When a federal court declared in 1985 that Tennessee's overcrowded prisons violated the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment, CCA made an audacious proposal to take over the state's entire prison system. The bid was unsuccessful, but it planted an idea in the minds of politicians across the country: They could outsource prison management and save money in the process. Privatization also gave states a way to quickly expand their prison systems without taking on new debt. 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.
     
  2. Margot2

    Margot2 Banned

    Joined:
    Sep 9, 2013
    Messages:
    73,644
    Likes Received:
    13,766
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Plantations, Prisons and Profits, NYT 2012

    “Louisiana is the world’s prison capital. The state imprisons more of its people, per head, than any of its U.S. counterparts. First among Americans means first in the world. Louisiana’s incarceration rate is nearly triple Iran’s, seven times China’s and 10 times Germany’s.”

    That paragraph opens a devastating eight-part series published this month by The Times-Picayune of New Orleans about how the state’s largely private prison system profits from high incarceration rates and tough sentencing, and how many with the power to curtail the system actually have a financial incentive to perpetuate it.

    The picture that emerges is one of convicts as chattel and a legal system essentially based on human commodification.

    First, some facts from the series:

    • One in 86 Louisiana adults is in the prison system, which is nearly double the national average.
    • More than 50 percent of Louisiana’s inmates are in local prisons, which is more than any other state. The next highest state is Kentucky at 33 percent. The national average is 5 percent.
    • Louisiana leads the nation in the percentage of its prisoners serving life without parole.
    • Louisiana spends less on local inmates than any other state.


    continued

    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/26/opinion/blow-plantations-prisons-and-profits.html
     
  3. Crankshaft

    Crankshaft Member

    Joined:
    Aug 31, 2009
    Messages:
    293
    Likes Received:
    2
    Trophy Points:
    18
    Thanks for linking this.

    I'm cynical when seeing a headline like that because too often the author/editor/etc are concerned only with finding a scandal even if there isn't one. I expected an article from the viewpoint of a reporter working in a prison as a reporter, and was happily surprised to find an article from someone who was actually doing the job of a prison guard and simply recording his reactions. Took a lot of courage to take the job, even knowing he wouldn't have to do it for the rest of his career.

    Shane Bauer authored an exceptionally good piece.
     
    Margot2 likes this.
  4. Margot2

    Margot2 Banned

    Joined:
    Sep 9, 2013
    Messages:
    73,644
    Likes Received:
    13,766
    Trophy Points:
    113
    I think so and yes it took courage.
     
  5. JoakimFlorence

    JoakimFlorence Banned

    Joined:
    Jan 1, 2016
    Messages:
    1,689
    Likes Received:
    14
    Trophy Points:
    0
    Whenever people have their freedom taken away and are made entirely reliant on other people, there is the potential for abuse or mistreatment.

    Some of these prisons are like hell on earth. They just throw people in and don't give much care what happens to them.
     
  6. Margot2

    Margot2 Banned

    Joined:
    Sep 9, 2013
    Messages:
    73,644
    Likes Received:
    13,766
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Not only does Louisiana have the highest incarceration rate in the world—more than 800 prisoners per 100,000 residents—but Winn is the oldest privately operated medium-security prison in the country.

    Louisiana’s incarceration rate is nearly triple Iran’s, seven times China’s and 10 times Germany’s.”
     
  7. JoakimFlorence

    JoakimFlorence Banned

    Joined:
    Jan 1, 2016
    Messages:
    1,689
    Likes Received:
    14
    Trophy Points:
    0
    Yes, that's basically how it is.

    There are a lot of people who just think along the lines of "criminals get whatever they deserve". They can't imagine that anyone would be in prison if they didn't deserve to be there, or that the legal system is as streamlined as the conveyor belt in a meat processing plant and might not be fair.
     
  8. perdidochas

    perdidochas Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Jul 24, 2008
    Messages:
    27,293
    Likes Received:
    4,346
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    China and Iran execute a lot more people than we do. China also uses slave labor from the prisoners.
     
  9. Margot2

    Margot2 Banned

    Joined:
    Sep 9, 2013
    Messages:
    73,644
    Likes Received:
    13,766
    Trophy Points:
    113
    I don't think that justifies these private for profit prisons or the high rates of incarceration in the US.
     
  10. JoakimFlorence

    JoakimFlorence Banned

    Joined:
    Jan 1, 2016
    Messages:
    1,689
    Likes Received:
    14
    Trophy Points:
    0
    The US also has more prisoners than China does, despite China having a population that's more than 3 times as big.
    (and no, the number of people executed in China doesn't come anywhere close to addressing this discrepancy)
     
  11. ArmySoldier

    ArmySoldier Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    Sep 11, 2014
    Messages:
    32,222
    Likes Received:
    12,253
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Well Iran people can legally stone people to death so I think this comparison is incredibly moronic. Women are also treated less equally legally there as well. Here you do time for slavery.
     
  12. CRUE CAB

    CRUE CAB New Member

    Joined:
    Mar 25, 2013
    Messages:
    5,952
    Likes Received:
    29
    Trophy Points:
    0
    As it should be.
     
  13. JoakimFlorence

    JoakimFlorence Banned

    Joined:
    Jan 1, 2016
    Messages:
    1,689
    Likes Received:
    14
    Trophy Points:
    0
    Shouldn't there at least be two different types of prisons – one with acceptable conditions, and one bad?
    Not everyone deserves the bad one.
     
  14. CRUE CAB

    CRUE CAB New Member

    Joined:
    Mar 25, 2013
    Messages:
    5,952
    Likes Received:
    29
    Trophy Points:
    0
     
  15. Margot2

    Margot2 Banned

    Joined:
    Sep 9, 2013
    Messages:
    73,644
    Likes Received:
    13,766
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Therefore Louisiana is justified and private prisons are just another for profit opportunity.
     
  16. Eleuthera

    Eleuthera Well-Known Member Donor

    Joined:
    Jun 13, 2015
    Messages:
    22,694
    Likes Received:
    11,760
    Trophy Points:
    113
    I read this story in Mother Jones snail mail. Fantastic journalism by the magazine and the reporter!

    The story acknowledges the Stanford Prison Experiment, and rightly so.

    The US has the highest per capita rate of imprisonment for a number of reasons, and corporate influence is one of those reasons.
     
  17. Pork_Butt

    Pork_Butt Active Member

    Joined:
    Dec 26, 2013
    Messages:
    673
    Likes Received:
    200
    Trophy Points:
    43
    If you don't want to go to prison, don't make bad decisions and it won't be a problem.
     
  18. WJV

    WJV Banned

    Joined:
    Jul 30, 2016
    Messages:
    939
    Likes Received:
    13
    Trophy Points:
    0
    Do more people get raped in private prisons or state ones?

    Why do so many get raped in US jails? Are US criminals more likely to be homosexuals? I don't understand why US has such a massive problem with jail rape. If private prisons can get jail rape numbers down them I am all for them.
     
  19. MRogersNhood

    MRogersNhood Banned

    Joined:
    Jul 20, 2015
    Messages:
    4,401
    Likes Received:
    24
    Trophy Points:
    0
    Wow! Now why can't political journalism be like that?
    That's what you call objective journalism right there!
    [​IMG]
     
  20. Margot2

    Margot2 Banned

    Joined:
    Sep 9, 2013
    Messages:
    73,644
    Likes Received:
    13,766
    Trophy Points:
    113
    It is outstanding journalism, isn't it?
     
  21. Eleuthera

    Eleuthera Well-Known Member Donor

    Joined:
    Jun 13, 2015
    Messages:
    22,694
    Likes Received:
    11,760
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Yes it is, unlike some of MJ's other work.

    - - - Updated - - -

    There are many innocent persons in prison. Think DNA. Think Central Park 5. Think Innocence Project. It's all too common.
     
  22. Hoosier8

    Hoosier8 Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    Jan 16, 2012
    Messages:
    107,541
    Likes Received:
    34,488
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Iran bypasses prison with summary executions. No one knows how many people are imprisoned in China due to black prisons.
     
  23. Crcata

    Crcata Banned

    Joined:
    Jul 8, 2016
    Messages:
    1,477
    Likes Received:
    25
    Trophy Points:
    0
    If the asains in China are anything like against in the states, its no surprise they don't have as much as us in prison.
     
  24. Bobbybobby99

    Bobbybobby99 New Member

    Joined:
    Mar 24, 2016
    Messages:
    653
    Likes Received:
    8
    Trophy Points:
    0
    The poor person that does time for stealing a diamond ring for their fiancée most certainly does not deserve to be put in the same place (possibly for the same time) as the guy who fed his cat to a boa constrictor, and we put people in jail way, way too much, particularly for drug based offenses, and I'd say that we're a bit overeager about it even in other cases.
     
  25. Margot2

    Margot2 Banned

    Joined:
    Sep 9, 2013
    Messages:
    73,644
    Likes Received:
    13,766
    Trophy Points:
    113
    For profit corporate prisons require bed occupancy.
     

Share This Page