My Four Months as a Private Prison Guard (36619)

Where do I even start? This piece took me ages to read, as it’s over 36,000 words, but it was worth every minute. I was so enthralled from start to finish. Shane Bauer, a journalist, wanted to explore the behind-the-scenes, so to speak, of private prisons. They hold around 130,000 incarcerated people at any given time, but no one really knew what happened behind closed doors. Bauer was sent to be a guard at Winn Correctional Center in Louisiana, where he underwent training, exhaustion, serious thought about his life choices, and completely altering experiences. Nobody, especially Bauer, was ready for what the private prison offered. 

This feature takes the audience through the whole process, beginning with arriving in a new town, the precautions of staying a town over so as not to be seen by fellow guards, the nonchalant, no-loophole way he was hired with no previous experience, and the seemingly uncaring attitudes of the veteran guards and wardens. The reactions to inmates, violence, and death by his peers was shocking-- they didn’t seem to be bothered. When the supervisor/training instructor told them that violence was sometimes the only way to stop the inmates from attacking you, I had this uneasy feeling. They also explained that they don’t stop fights between inmates unless there are particular circumstances. The staff regarded this as a way to keep the prisoners in line, or “take care” of them, without having to do anything. These were people. Being ignored. Being injured by others. It was a slap in the face for me as a reader to understand that this is just the way it is. It shouldn’t be, but it is.

Bauer explains the correctional facility, even maps it out for the readers to understand exactly what he’s talking about when he mentions the Cypress unit, the Elm unit, etc. So much detail is included, it seems like the reader is experiencing everything with him. Each section of the piece focuses on a different step in the process of learning to be and living as a prison guard in such a place. “Prison Experiments” and “The CCA Way” do well to introduce the kinds of situations he faces and addresses. 

The focus is to expose or reiterate the problems with prisons, especially private prisons. Winn Correctional Center was understaffed, underfunded, and filled with people who can’t do much about it because they need to follow the rules to keep their jobs. This is just all they’ve known. Everything Bauer writes in this seems like awful things for humans to say and do to other humans, but it’s reality. He doesn’t sugar coat anything, which is why the piece is so hard-hitting. It’s this insanely complicated, stressful place that people shouldn’t be subjected to, yet the CCA still demands certain unrealistic standards that can’t be met. 

Bauer’s writing is so successful because he writes to let readers see rather than just writing to inform. His emotional appeals are well integrated with the other important and necessary facts. He describes his relationships with the other characters during his four months. He documents his personal interactions with the inmates, and how uneasy/conflicted he is the whole time. It’s exciting to read because while he clearly has opinions about how the prison is run, he also is very clearly struggling to keep his straight-line views after witnessing what actually happens. The visual aids, including the videos for each segment and maps/photos of him and the correctional center, just add to how vividly the reader imagines the scene. Overall, reading this piece was not boring for a second because of how raw, emotional, and engaging it was. This is true investigative journalism.