During his four months at Winn, Bauer also noticed a cruelty streak developing in his own character even some of the inmates told Bauer that he was changing, and not for the better. Nearly every page of this tale contains examples of shocking inhumanity. Despite the awful conditions in his Iranian cell, Bauer found many of the conditions in Louisiana to be even worse. The author had also viewed prison from a different perspective, having been incarcerated for two years in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison because he had unwittingly crossed a border while hiking as a tourist.

Bauer determined that the guards, most of them unarmed, were outnumbered by the inmates by a ratio as high as 200 to 1. At Winn, correctional officers (a term they prefer to “guard”) risk their safety every day for $9 per hour. At least 8 percent of inmates in state prisons must adjust to the practices of laxly regulated private companies rather than those in government-run facilities.

Bauer (co-author: A Sliver of Light: Three Americans Imprisoned in Iran, 2014), who has won the National Magazine Award in addition to many others, spent four months inside the prison as a corrections officer, carrying out an undercover journalism assignment to find the truth behind CCA’s documented record of lies about its practices. That prison was operated by the Corrections Corporation of America, but after a shorter version of this book appeared in Mother Jones, the company rebranded as CoreCivic and lost the Winn contract with the government. A penetrating exposé on the cruelty and mind-bending corruption of privately run prisons across the United States, with a focus on the Winn facility in Louisiana.

American Prison by Shane Bauer