Shane Bauer
My Four Months as a Private Prison Guard
Chapter 1: āInmates Run This Bitchā
āHave you ever had a riot?ā I ask a recruiter from a prison run by the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA).
āThe last riot we had was two years ago,ā he says over the phone.
āYeah, but that was with the Puerto Ricans!ā says a womanās voice, cutting in. āWe got rid of them.ā
āWhen can you start?ā 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.
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 nationās 1.6 million prisoners. As a journalist, itās nearly impossible to get an unconstrained look inside our penal system. When prisons do let reporters in, itās usually for carefully managed tours and monitored interviews with inmates. Private prisons are especially secretive. Their records often arenāt 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 werenāt interested in the details of my rĆ©sumĆ©. They didnāt 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 didnāt even ask about the time I was arrested for shoplifting when I was nineteen.
When I call Winn Correctional Center in Winnfield, Louisiana, the HR lady who answers is chipper and has a smoky Southern voice. āI should tell you upfront that the job only pays nine dollars an hour, but the prison is in the middle of a national forest. Do you like to hunt and fish?ā
āI like fishing.ā
āWell, there is plenty of fishing, and people around here like to hunt squirrels. You ever squirrel hunt?ā
āNo.ā
āWell, I think youāll like Louisiana. I know itās 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 COāāa corrections officer.
Ultimately, I choose Winn. Not only does Louisiana have the highest incarceration rate in the worldāmore than 800 prisoners per 100,000 residentsābut Winn is the oldest privately operated medium-security prison in the country.
I phone HR and tell her Iāll take the job.
āWell, poop can stick!ā she says.
I pass the background check within twenty-four hours.
ā¢ ā¢ ā¢
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 CCAās corporate logo, with the head of a bald eagle inside the āA.ā
At the entrance, a guard who looks about sixty, 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 Iām a new cadet, here to start my four weeks of training. She directs me to a building just outside the prison fence.
āHave a good one, baby,ā she says as I pull through the gate. I exhale.
I park, find the classroom, and sit down with five other students.
āYou nervous?ā a nineteen-year-old black guy asks me. Iāll call him Reynolds. (Iāve changed the names and nicknames of the people I met in prison unless noted otherwise.)
āA little,ā I say. āYou?ā
āNah, I been around,ā he says. āI seen killinā. My uncle killed three people. My brother been in jail, and my cousin.ā 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. āIt was some gang shit.ā 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 heāll probably come in every day. āThat will be a fat paycheck.ā 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, weāll get 500 bucks. She gives us an assortment of other tips: Donāt eat the food given to inmates; donāt have sex with them or you could be fined $10,000 or get ten years at hard labor; try not to get sick because we donāt 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 companyās 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 nineteen times the salary of the director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. āYou may be brand new to CCA,ā Hininger says, ābut 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.ā
I look around the room. Not one personānot the recent high school graduate, not the former Walmart manager, not the nurse, not the mother of twins whoās come back to Winn after ten years of McDonaldās and a stint in the militaryālooks excited.
āI donāt think this is for me,ā a postal worker says.
āDo not run!ā
The next day, I wake up at six 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 Iāll call Mr. Tucker comes into the classroom, his black fatigues tucked into shiny black boots. Heās the head of Winnās Special Operations Response Team, or SORT, the prisonās SWAT-like tactical unit. āIf an inmate was to spit in your face, what would you do?ā he asks. Some cadets say they would write him up. One woman, who has worked here for thirteen years and is doing her annual retraining, says, āI would want to hit him. Depending on where the camera is, he might would get hit.ā
Mr. Tucker pauses to see if anyone else has a response. āIf your personality if somebody spit on you is to knock the fuck out of him, you gonna knock the fuck out of him,ā he says, pacing slowly. āIf a inmate hit me, Iām goā hit his ass right back. I donāt care if the cameraās rolling. If a inmate spit on me, heās gonna have a very bad day.ā Mr. Tucker says we should call for backup in any confrontation. āIf a midget spit on you, guess what? You still supposed to call for backup. You donāt 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. Iāll help you. Me and you can whup the hell out of him.ā
He asks us what we should do if we see two inmates stabbing each other.
āIād probably call somebody,ā a cadet offers.
āIād sit there and holler āstop,ā ā says a veteran guard.
Mr. Tucker points at her. āDamn right. Thatās it. If they donāt pay attention to you, hey, there aināt nothing else you can do.ā
He cups his hands around his mouth. āStop fighting,ā he says to some invisible prisoners. āI said, āStop fighting.ā ā His voice is nonchalant. āYāall aināt goā to stop, huh?ā He makes like heās backing out of a door and slams it shut. āLeave your ass in there!ā
āSomebodyās goā win. Somebodyās goā lose. They both might lose, but hey, did you do your job? Hell yeah!ā The classroom erupts in laughter.
We could try to break up a fight if we wanted, he says, but since we wonāt have pepper spray or a nightstick, he wouldnāt recommend it. āWe are not going to pay you that much,ā he says emphatically. āThe next raise you get is not going to be much more than the one you got last time. The only thing thatās important to us is that we go home at the end of the day. Period. So if them fools want to cut each other, well, happy cutting.ā
When we return from break, Mr. Tucker sets a tear gas launcher and canisters on the table. āOn any given day, they can take this facility,ā he says. āAt chow time, there are 800 inmates and just two COs. But with just this class, we could take it back.ā He passes out sheets for us to sign, stating that we volunteer to be tear-gassed. If we do not sign, he says, our training is over, which means our jobs end right here. (When I later ask CCA if its staff members are required to be exposed to tear gas, spokesman Steven Owen says no.) āAnybody have asthma?ā Mr. Tucker says. āTwo people had asthma in the last class and I said, āOkay, well, Iāma spray āem anyway.ā Can we spray an inmate? The answer is yes.ā
Five of us walk outside and stand in a row, arms linked. Mr. Tucker tests the wind with a finger and drops a tear gas cartridge. A white cloud of gas washes over us. The object is to avoid panicking, staying in the same place until the gas dissipates. My throat is suddenly on fire and my eyes seal shut. I try desperately to breathe, but I can only choke. āDo not run!ā Mr. Tucker shouts at a cadet who is stumbling off blindly. I double over. I want to throw up. I hear a woman crying. My upper lip is thick with snot. When our breath starts coming back, the two women linked to me hug each other. I want to hug them too. The three of us laugh a little as tears keep pouring down our cheeks.
āDonāt ever say thank youā
Our instructors advise us to carry a notebook to keep track of everything prisoners will ask us for. I keep one in my breast pocket and jet into the bathroom periodically to jot things down. They also encourage us to invest in a watch because when we document rule infractions it is important that we record the time precisely. A few days into training, a wristwatch arrives in the mail. One of the little knobs on its side activates a recorder. On its face there is a tiny camera lens.
On the eighth day, we are pulled from CPR class and sent inside the compound to Elmāone of five single-story brick buildings where the prisonās roughly 1,500 inmates live. When we go through security, we are told to empty our pockets and remove our shoes and belts. This is intensely nerve-wracking: I send my watch, pen, employee ID, and pocket change through the X-ray machine. I walk through the metal detector and a CO runs a wand up and down my body and pats down my chest, back, arms, and legs.
The other cadets and I gather at a barred gate and an officer, looking at us through thick glass, turns a switch that opens it slowly. We pass through, and after the gate closes behind us, another opens ahead. On the other side, the CCA logo is emblazoned on the wall along with the words āRespectā and āIntegrityā and a mural of two anchors inexplicably floating at sea. Another gate clangs open and our small group steps onto the main outdoor artery of the prison: āthe walk.ā
From above, the walk is shaped like a āT.ā It is fenced in with chain-link and covered with corrugated steel. Yellow lines divide the pavement into three lanes. Clustered and nervous, we cadets travel up the middle lane from the administration building as prisoners move down their designated side lanes. I greet inmates as they pass, trying hard to appear loose and unafraid. Some say good morning. Others stop in their tracks and make a point of looking the female cadets up and down.
We walk past the squat, dull buildings that house visitation, programming, the infirmary, and a church with a wrought-iron gate shaped into the words āFreedom Chapel.ā Beyond it there is a mural of a fighter jet dropping a bomb into a mountain lake, water blasting skyward, and a giant bald eagle soaring overhead, backgrounded by an American flag. At the top of the T we take a left, past the chow hall and the canteen, where inmates can buy snacks, toiletries, tobacco, music players, and batteries.
The units sit along the top of the walk. Each is shaped like an āXā and connected to the main walk by its own short, covered walk. Every unit is named after a type of tree. Most are general populat...