next three programs on booktv. >> that's what's coming up on booktv on c-span2. now here's shane bauer who work undercover in a louisiana prison. >> okay, good evening. i want to welcome you back to octavia books tonight. adapted, we've been highly

anticipating and it's also being recorded for national broadcast, and so i could to hold the book up for you and for the camera. this is "american prison," and much of it is done in louisiana. this started as originally an article that appeared in "mother jones" that expanded greatly into this fascinating book. so with out drawing it out i'm going to introduce to you shane bauer who will tell you all about it. please give him a warm welcome. [applause] >> thank you. i'm super excited to be here. i've been in a few cities. i started in new york, but this is the stop i was most excited about because a lot of my book is about louisiana. not only my undercover stuff but i go further, deeper into louisiana which i will talk

about. sorry, , my technology is not working well. i had a presentation and it's not working but i still need it for my notes. so at the end of 2014 i applied for a job as a prison guard at a correction corporation of america that i've been reporting on prisons a few years, and like anybody who reports on prisons was constantly frustrated with how little access there are two prisons throughout the country.

this includes not just getting inside the getting basic information. we have public record laws that help us get basic information about violence, just kind of data about the prison, but even giving states to comply with those laws is a a difficult and often you have to sue to get them just to kind of comply with the law. and with these private prisons, it's even more difficult because they are private companies so public record laws often been dealt apply. these companies, they have been around, this company particulars been around since the '80s and we had not had a good close look at what life is like inside their prisons. this company is $1.8 billion company. the private prison and is generally about $4 billion a year industry.

it holds about 8% of our prison population and about two-thirds of our immigrant detainees. so i told the editors i was thinking about applying, and they basically said okay, just don't lie in the application. i think neither they nor i thought it was going to work. i would just fill out an application, send it off, took an hour and within a couple of weeks i was getting phone calls. i was getting, at several prisons wanting to do job interviews. so i spoke to them on the phone. i was surprised in the interviews they didn't ask me anything about my job history. they didn't ask anything about what i wanted to work in a prison. it was kind of like it could've been a walmart in it you. how do with others? what do you do if your boss tells you to do something you don't want to do?

that kind of stuff. it was almost like they were trying to convince me to take the job. it was a nine dollars an hour job, this one in louisiana, and they were trying to convince me to move from california to louisiana for nine bucks an hour. i ended up, had a few different options of prisons to go to around the country, and i chose to come to louisiana. part of the reason is that louisiana at the time was the most incarcerated place in the country. also in the world as far as the rate of incarceration. this prison in particular, winn correctional center, was the oldest medium security private prison in the country. i moved to winfield, winfield is a count of 5000 people, average household income is $25,000 a

year. the sheriff, the last ship before i was there was locked up for dealing meth. so pretty hard place. the prison, camp was a prison f about 1500 inmates. it was set in the middle of national forest, and the contract of the company had with the state guaranteed the prison would be kept 96% fall. so this date was required to either send enough prisoners to keep it at that level or pay the rate as if it were 96% full. the way the company makes money is the state and states around the country pay a rate per prisoner per day. so this prison was, the company was getting $34 $34 per inmater day. some states its $80. it's also it's also trained on

the new york stock exchange. i went in and i started trainin training, and i spent four months in total in the prison. while i was in the prison i was recording, i had this $35 watch which has a little camera on it and this in which records audio. i would leave the pan running all the time. size able to capture dialog. the reason i did this is because i couldn't take a lot of notes. i could more so during training because we were sitting and we were supposed to write. although i was only one that did so kind of stood up because i i was writing everything down they said. in the prison i was sometime run to the bathroom and jot things down or something like that. i wanted to not have to rely on

my memory and i wanted that what i wrote in the end to be verbatim pixel in the book the dialogue is 95% of the dialogue is verbatim, , exactly what peoe said. in training, we were in training for a month and one of the themes of training, one thing we're told is our job is to deliver value to our shareholders. i think it went along with that have to do with liability, you know, that we were kind of mint to do what we were required to also be careful not to put ourselves in a situation that would cost the company more money. i'm going to read a little section from training that is related to this. i raised my hand. sorry. mr. tucker as what we should do if we see two inmates stabbing each other. i would probably call somebody a

cadet officer mr. tucker points at her, damn right, that's it. if they don't pay attention do, there ain't nothing else you can do. stop fighting, he says to some of his invisible present. i said stop fighting. nonchalant. y'all ain't going to stop? he makes like he is backing out of a of the door and slammed it shut. leave your ass in their. he turns to face with. somebody's going to win, somebody's going to lose. hell, they both might lose but hey, did you did your job? hell, yeah. the classroom erupted in laughter. we could try to break up a fight if you want to, but he wouldn't recommend it. we are not going to pay you that much, he said emphatically. the next raise you get will not be much more than the one you got last time. the only thing that is important to us is that we go home at the end of the day. if dimples want to cut each other, happy cutting.

so this company was founded in 1980s, but for most of american history, citizens were meant to -- prisons were meant to turn a profit. after did this, this undercover investigation and i went to work on this book, i realized that you really can't tell the story of for profit presence i do go way back further than the '80s. i what all the way the american revolution, and so the way that the book is laid out is i tell the story of my time undercover in alternating chapters with the history of american prisons, american for-profit present a particular, trace the kind of evolution for the very beginning of prisons to the present. and i found throughout american history prisons really until the 1970s, prisons especially in

the south were turning a profit, either for private companies or for the state. and so here in louisiana the first prison was open in the 1830s, and belizean was was one of the first places ever to privatize its penitentiary, in 1845. it was in baton rouge it was opened, and, but to get some context about the opening of this penitentiary, this was a time when the south, there were no penitentiaries in the south. the idea of the penitentiary was still new. it started in the northeast. they were invented in the united states, and the south was resistant to the idea of penitentiaries. partially because they're associated with abolitionists slavery abolitionists because they tended to be death penalty

abolitionists in the penitentiary was at the time of reform. the idea was instead of executing somebody for theft, you sentenced him to some years in prison. and the penitentiary was kind of a threat to the white supremacists ideology of the south because the norm of penitentiaries that existed in the north was come when somebody went to prison they were forced to labor from dawn to dusk. if the south that opened penitentiaries, the people who went to them would mostly be white because african-americans at the time were mostly slaves and were punished on the plantations. why people would be forced to labor. what convinced louisiana to open its penitentiary was learning that the penitentiaries in the north were actually making money

for the state. they were bringing a profit from their labor and the prisons and the north were contracted to private contractors and they were adding money to the state coffers. so louisiana opened its penitentiary. it was essentially like all penitentiaries at the time, it was a factory. louisiana and other states in the south saw it as a way to help industrialize the south and take kind of the northern monopoly on industry and bring it south. shortly after louisiana open its penitentiary and articles written in newspapers and other states in the south praising the penitentiary and suggesting that slaveowners kind of learned from the infantry system. it was kind of the frontier of any type of forced labor in the south. it was industrial, and they suggested that slaveowners use

women and children to work on cotton mills instead of out in the fields where they were maybe not as productive. when is going to all this research, i wondered if the civil war had not happened when it did its slavery has lasted longer would it have shifted in the direction of what the form that was in the penitentiaries once the south had been industrialize to more. in texas, a lot of states followed louisiana's lead, and texas opened, a a fuse after it opened its penitentiary was the largest factor in the state and it was actually the largest supplier of textiles west of the mississippi. this time was really in the south was, it was a boom time, especially in louisiana. new orleans was on its way to surpassing new york as a

countries economic capital, had the largest concentration of banks in the country, the largest slave market. the frontier was constantly expanding and opening up more land for cotton. so northern investors, european investors were pumping money into the state. it was very easy to get a a lo, and then the bubble burst and the economy collapsed. america went to its first great depression. and this is in 1837, and like today, louisiana, after the bubble burst, the penitentiary was not making money for the state. it was a burden. unlike today, one of the targets for belt-tightening was the prison. so the state privatize the prison. shortly after this happened, the conditions rapidly got worse.

i i found a memoir of the prisor would been at the time and he talks about, it's similar to things you here today, that the people running the prison dropped any kind of attempt at rehabilitating inmates, and it was all about profit. you have to understand this time, the idea of the penitentiary was new and the idea of it was based on the notion that people would be rehabilitated through labor. but there is no evidence, the penitentiary existed for about 30 years in this country, no evidence to support this. there were still high crime rates, but at this time it almost didn't matter. louisiana, by 1857, was making the modern-day equivalent of $1.2 million in profit on its penitentiary. that's about $4000 per inmate per year. so they were hooked, looked on

this kind of, this mode of punishment. because they were making money from it. so back to winn. when i was in training, most of the people i was in training with where poor people. there were a lot of single moms, people who just need a insurance, health insurance. they had kids. there were also kids out of high school. there was one guy who i called collinsworth in the book was 18, the the only of the job he had was working at starbucks for a little bit. i'm going to read the scene that involves him. this is from my second week of training. >> people say a lot of negative things about cca. we will hire anybody. we're scraping the bottom of the barrel, which is not really true but if you come here and your breathing and you have a valid

drivers license and willing to work, then we are willing to hire you. she looks at us start with the you will realize you ain't getting paid enough for which are putting up with back figure nine dollars is not a lot of money. you can go get that at mcdonald's. for nine dollars all we track is a person doesn't have a lot of responsibility. f by the man trying to support my family, you can't pick you have to pay for gas. she wants us appraisers will remind us every day of how little we make. then your eyes open up to it. your mind opens up to it. then they start to ask you to do things for them because i have more money than what you are making in the day. that's appealing to a lot of people. by late morning our instructors have not shown so she tells us we can go to the gym to watch inmates graduate from trade class. wages earned skills like carpentry and plumbing. prisoners and the families are milling around the basketball court. and in that offers a piece of bread doublet to ms. story. people are smiling, laughing.

when you see inmate with a smile like that, it's worth something. i feel surprise me at ease wandering among prisoners in my uniform. keep your head up, and total olr black inmate in wiltshire says to me. always know who you is here on the talked about coming out as a superior of talk about being industry. everything will be all right. he tells me his name is robert scott and he's been there for 12 years. i was walking when i kinder, he tells them. have my fingers. i noticed he is wearing fingerless gloves with nothing poking out of the. they took my legs in january and my fingers in june. gangrene don't play. i kept saying my feet hurt. they said ain't nothing wrong with you. i don't see nothing wrong with you. they didn't believe me. he tells me his swing cca for neglect claiming inmates are denied medical care because the company operates the prison on a

skeleton crew for profitable gains. prisoners continued to mill around. he suggested order and went on to the bleachers. no, man, there's only seven of us. we can't take all them right there. everybody, eventually they sit down and in the gym grows sile. the prisoners stare at us from across the room. the tension ratchets up until a inmate lets out a bloodcurdling scream. the other slapping the coach orders them to form a light in front of us. they could to the bathroom to be strip-searched. i braced myself as inmates, towards us. several gathered around me and asked about our watches. some get up close to mine looking directly into the camera. one wearing at being asked to buy them. i refuse outright. collinsworth dithers. how old you is? you never know, collinsworth says. man, always thank ass.

the best thing to do is get to know people to understand your home, but i'm at work right now. so your home for 12 hours a day, you tripping. you're about to do half my time with me. you straight without? it's probably true. it ain't no probably true. if you're going to be up this bitch you're going to do 12 hours a day. he tells collinsworth not to bother writing people up for small infractions. they are not paying enough. you are torn between trying to present within me. drugs, don't worry about drugs. the inmate says the cards turn a blind eye to it. they ain't tripping on that shit comey says. i tell you, it ain't that type of kent. you can't come and change things by yourself. you might as well go with the flow, get this free ass easy ass went into home. this job, you will see, it's got benefits. i got some benefits already,

collinsworth said, like health insurance. i'm not talk about no health insurance. talk about more money. i'm just her to do much of an take care of my family, collinsworth says i'm not going to bring something because even if i don't get caught is always a chance that i will. ain't no chance. i ain't never heard of nobody nothing good in loki getting caught, none. i know i do still rolling. he's been doing six years. he looks at collinsworth. easy. and in a pix of the podium over his head and runs with it across the gym. another throws a graduation certificate dramatically into the trash. the coach shouts, exasperated as prisoners continued to scramble. i can't breathe one shouts. you see this chaos? if you're been in another can't ain't no order here. inmates run this bitch, son.

so in louisiana during the civil war, the state took the prison back from the company and they used it to manufacture for the war, use prisoners to manufacture for the war. as soon as the war ended, ms. across the south who were making tons of money from slavery were scheming a way to keep slavery alive. here in louisiana one man is named samuel lawrence james, and you know, the 13th amendment abolished slavery, accepted punishment for crime and james is very aware of this. he also knew the state had been leasing parishioners to businessman before the war. the economy was in ruins at the time, and so he proposed to the state that he lease all of the states convicts for 30 years. and he did. he also at the time bought a

plantation in a parish called angola, and he moved there with his family. he brought inmates to the prison and made them work in the fields. he made them serve and and his family in the house. but he mostly used the prisoners in labor camps around the state, building levees and railroads. prisoners cost about one 20th of the cost of free labor, and the law in louisiana did not actually allow him to use, it allowed him to use prison labor let it was supposed be inside the penitentiary produced not allowed to take an outside the prison. when the state tried to stop and he just ignored them and continued running labor camps. the state eventually relented. he also was supposed to give the

state a cut of the profits. this is also the system in other states, so it wasn't only the businessman that were making money, it was also the state. he didn't for six years pay the state. a lawyer, state attorney sued and he ignored it, and they eventually relented. he had been, become one of the most powerful men in the state and was essentially untouchable. states were making tons of money from this system of convict leasing through slavery. the u.s. commissioner of labor reported estate using convict leasing was making average revenue, four times the cost of running a prison. alabama was making 10% 10% of s entire state budget them convict leasing. so they were very invested in it. probably at all of the

historical research i did, the thing that really shocked me the most was learning that convict leasing was more deadly than slavery. it was as deadly as soviet gulags that would come. the death rate throughout the south, , depending on the state, ranged from 16-25% per year. so in four prisoners were dying every year. in louisiana under james is least in the 30 years he had the lease, least 3000 prisoners died. now, during the time of slavery, there were very few planters, slave owners that had more than 1000 enslaved people. there is no record of any of them letting that number die. the reason behind this, there's a quote of this man, seven man

who told the national conference of charities and corrections in 1883, he said before the war we own the negroes. the man had a good negro, he could afford to take care of him. if you were sick, get a doctor doctor. convicts, we don't own them. one dies, get another. so there were essentially just leasing a number, and there's no, in any state there was no regulations for how long appreciative could work, what type of work they could be used in and out are they could be worked. so torture was the norm and was one of the reasons that businessman like using inmates rather than free laborers because free laborers are no longer be driven by the web like slaves had been. so inmates could produce faster. people who didn't make quota were whipped or hung by their

thumbs are put through water torture where they had a pipe put down the throat and were pumped full of water to feel like their stomachs were expanding so much they felt like they were going to die. prisoners were put to work in coal mines, in swamps, laying railroads. kind of the worst jobs that exist in the south and jobs at free laborers didn't want to do. so back to winn. i took this job as a guard mostly as a way to get inside. i wasn't necessarily motivated by the idea i wanted to write about what it's like to be a guard. it's like i want to be summer, i want to be inside the prison day in and get to get a close look at kind of conditions and what life is like for prisoners. but i very quickly became

consumed by this role of being a prison guard. i had thought, originally i will go in, be very easy-going, stay out of peoples way and i will have much trouble. but it wasn't like that. the place was, you know, 1500 prisoners. there were some days where there were 24 guards. so there was enormous pressure. i worked any unit with 350 prisoners and it was 11 of the guard on the floor with me for all those people. and it was very violent. i saw people stabbed each other in front of me, and i saw myself quickly becoming more and more authoritarian and more of my energy was focused, my energy was focused less on kind of reporting and trying to see what

comes notice details and things like that, and more focused on the kind of battles that i was having with various prisoners. and i promise becoming almost obsessed sometimes with, paranoid that people were trying to do something to me, or that people were getting outside of my control. i would go home and kind of feel ashamed of the person i was inside. i knows the longer i was there the more different those two people became, the person outside in the person inside. this scene that i'm going to read is from my first few weeks on the job in the prison, and this, i recently blown up on a person who i i call in shades n the book, kind a snap and shouting at him. and we kind of had a reconciliation.

so that happened a couple of days before this. >> my might reconciliation with pink shade encouraged me. every time i have a problem with the prisoner i try the same approach and eventually we showed each other respect. still, these breakthroughs are feeding. in the moment they feel like a glimmer of a possibility that we can appreciate each other humanity but i come to understand that our positions make this virtually impossible. we can chat and left through the bars but inevitably i need to flex my authority. my job will always be to deny them the most basic of human impulses, to push for more freedom. day by day the number of inmates were printed with me grows smaller. there are exceptions like store. i know he would become an inmate. my priorities changed. striving to treat everyone as human takes too much energy. more and more i focused on proving i will not back down. i am vigilant. i come to work ready for people

to capcom are run upon me and threatened to punch me in the face. i should neither fear nor compunction. sometimes prisoners called a racist and it stings but but is hard as i cannot to flinch because to do so would be to show a pressure point, a button that can be pressed when you want to make the band. nearly every day the unit reaches a crescendo of frustration because inmates are supposed to be going somewhere like the law library, ged classes or take vocational training or substance abuse group. their programs are canceled or they are led out of the liquor inmates tell me under the present the schedule is firm. that would be open but it woule on the move an inmate has been incarcerated throughout the state says. q there is no schedule. we wait for the call over the radio and the minute the inmates go. they could eat at 11:30 a.m. they could eat at 3 p.m. school might happen or maybe not. it has been years since winn is have the staff and the bigger

prick sometimes let the inmates onto the small yard, often we don't. canteen at law library hours are canceled regularly. there are just not enough officers. guards bond with the prisoners over their frustrations. prisoners tells the understand we are powerless to change these high-level management problems, yet the two groups remain locked in a battle like soldiers in war they don't believe in. whenever i open the door i demand anyone show me his id, shall be his past and i use my body to stop the flood of people from pouring out. some just push through. i catch one, get back in, i should. i'm writing you up if you don't get back in there. you hear me? he walked back in staring me down. white dude all in my trail, he says. i shut the door ignoring him. you better get down here before end up hurting one of y'all, he shouts at me. you are green. i'm tired. an inmate comes around the control room.

they called me to stop. i stand in the inmates after i know him, the one with the many dreadlocks for i feel threatened frankly whenever i see him. this way, i say, pointing back toward where he came from. he tries to walk past lock eyes with it. this way, i command. he turns back and walks slowly away. i walked behind him. he stops, spins around, throws his hands in the air and shouts get off my trail. true. i know his test meter i open his door picky walks in, stands just inside in scares me down hard. i grabbed the door and slammed it shut. in his face. i turned and stepped right into the throng of inmates milling around the floor. going to end up dead, he shouts after me. i stop and turned around. he just stares. i grabbed a raid on the shoulder and then pause. was ever taught what to do? i know how to press the button and speaking to the radio, but who do i call?

i think of king, the officer who smashed the kids job sergeant king, could you come down? in route. when he rise i taken into the 12. he needs needs to get locked up i said. i tell the inmate, i tell in the inmate threatened my life. what happened? i said nothing. i walk away. i go back to chasing others into their cells. what did you like that dude up for court dude was about to go home, another says. he ain't going to go home now. i walk away and yielding. in the back of my mind there is a voice. did you see them say anything? wasn't your back turned? are you sure what you heard? it doesn't matter really. he won to intimidate me. they need to know i am not weak.

so in the end of the 1800s, angola plantation was still run by james and this date ended convict leasing. the inmates that were there living the life identical to slavery continued the same life, but not under the state rather than a private businessman. the state still ran it at a profit, and it's the course today the states maximum security prison. no longer runs at a profit but it is still a type of plantation. and throughout the south, louisiana is one of the earlier states that ended convict leasing but in the south states and convict leasing. largely because the states kind

of became jealous of the profits that companies were making at the time. there were major corporations that were involved in convict leasing. the u.s. steel company which is the world's first billion-dollar company was using thousands of convict laborers in alabama and tennessee, and it was using to break strikes, though with the wages of free workers. so states realized they could cut out the middleman and by plantations themselves and run them and all the money would go to the state treasury's. so this system of state run plantations in the south went on for decades. really into the 1960s and 70s. like i said there are still state run plantations i'm referring to the kind of system of forced labor that was, these politicians were being run at a profit and everybody was forced

labor on them. to keep costs low and maximize profits, plantations like angola which is prisoners as guards. they would give guns typically to the most brutal prisoners would be willing to shoot an inmate who is trying to escape. louisiana, mississippi and arkansas, they all use this kind of system as inmate guards and they would grant an automatic parole to inmate card who shot and killed an escaping inmate. in this system inmates were also acting as overseers on the plantations. they would with prisoners that didn't make quotas. arkansas allowed with being in its present until 1967. it was also electrocuting prisoners who were not making labor quotas are refusing to work. there was a doctor in alabama

that was selling like plasma of prisoners and making money from it. so this is, it was in this world that the founder of the corrections corporation of america started his career. i wish you could see the images. they are in the book but these pictures of the plantation at the time that he was at, it's exactly how you would imagine slavery looking. black black men, cotton fields, hunched over polling cotton bags. he was the word of the rainsy plantation which was the size of manhattan, and prisoners picked cotton. he lived on the plantation. he had what were called house

boys. these were prisoners, usually black, who served in any salmon in his house. i found the regulations from the time for house boys, and it kind of a code the fears that slave owners had of their house slaves. for example, his wife was forbidden with conversing with the house boys are being overly familiar with them. the house boys would do the laundry but there were not allowed to wash her underwear. they were not allowed to sit and talk with the family for fear it would lead to impertinence. and remember, this is when the year that, you know, the beatles all you need is love is a hit on the radio. there were these people living in like these kind of hidden replicas of slavery times.

he was so good at the job in texas that he was brought on to run the entire system in arkansas which consisted of two plantation prisons. he would start a rodeo there where people could come from the public and watch prisoners do things like trying to grab a poker chip off a bowls had for small cash prizes. many prisoners were gored. angola of course still does this, on the place and the country as far as i know that continues to have a prison rodeo. and he would run that plantation system at a profit to the state and usually the last person to run a state run prison at a profit. when he left in the mid-'70s,

the prison population began to skyrocket in unprecedented ways that just peaked a few years ago. the prison population about the country multiplied, i think it was four or five times what had been, and states and then were not able to build prisons fast enough to hold all of their prisoners. he had a reputation for running prisons at a profit was approached by two businessmen who suggested the idea to him that they start a company that delayed recall corrections corporation of america and would be the new mode of away for people to profit from incarceration. they would build prisons and states like in 1840 louisiana that didn't have money would hire the companies to run them

cheaper. the prison that i was in, it really, it became very chaotic when i was there. they were kind of in a crisis point. the state was thinking to pull the contract. there were four months in 2015, there was some 200 weapons found weapons found, which is 23 times more than angola at the same time. and everybody, you know, everybody despises companies. one of the things that really surprised me is you hear guards and prisoners on it over the disdain of the company. i had a card i work with at one point said me that he wished and undercover reporter, investigative reporter would come and investigate the prison. i couldn't say anything to him. but after i left, the company

threatened to sue "mother jones" if i published the story. i left a very suddenly, and they found out who i was. so the company do that i'd been a reported reporter. they were threatening trying to make us not publish the story. a few weeks after we published the story the obama administration announced they were no longer going to use private prisons at the federal level. the stock price of core civic, they change the name, it fell by half. it just tanked. the industry was really in a crisis, and then when donald trump was elected, the day that he was elected the stock price just skyrocketed. it went up more than any company on the stock market that day. and after he became president, you know, jeff sessions reversed

obama era decisions so the company is now even doing better than it was before the obama administration. i guess i will end here and take your questions, but thanks, thanks for listening. [applause] .. >> and then the medicine with the guys, oh yeah. i've heard personally.

>> while you were talking about how it's changing you personally, breathe being a prison guard, all i can think of about is 2 psychiatrists. >> that was all i could think about was you, did you look into that at the same time it was happening to you? >> i was reading this book at some point while i was there and i mean, i can't say the same thing to almost every guard, i saw different guards react in different ways but that resonated with me . and i think generally the kind of idea that resonated was that i don't know. it made me realize how much our situation determines who we are and more than i really

realized. if i had been there for a year or 2 years or more, i'm sure i would be a different personon some level . i believe there's this inner core that we all have that is unchanging but i don't know if i believe that anymore. >> what were some surprises you encountered in notions that you had before which got changed while you were there? >> i didn't mention this in the beginning but i myself had been in prison for 2 years in iran from 2009 2011. i was living in the middle east as a reporter at the time and it quickly turned into kind of a political situation between the us and iran and it was me and two friends were used as bargaining chips.

so i spent two years in prison and i was in solitary confinement for four years. as a prisoner , guards were my enemy. not that i needed every guard, there were some guards that helped me and there was a huge range of course but even the friendliest guards, i never considered them my friends because they would lock me up every day . so i guess i was just learning the ways that the guards, the prison were also exploited by the system and the toxicity of that environment. the level of that just struck me and it really kind of made me think about that position differently than ihad before . >> any comments comparing the iranian system to the american system?

>> people ask me and it's hard to compare. at some level the experience of being locked up, there's a universality to it but the person i was in and iran was a political prison. so people, a lot of protesters were there. we were interrogated, if you left the cell you hadto be blindfolded . people were tortured under interrogation. it's highly controlled in a lot of ways and in some places america is the opposite, it's chaotic and kind of bare-bones so it was brutal in a different way. >> i wondered also about the suicide watch. there's an illustration in your book and i've always found that it's just absolutely bizarre and draconian that they take someone who'sin danger of suicide and strip them of whatever privileges they have

. >> suicide watch was one of the maybe the most brutal things i saw there. so the context, part of the context is that the whole prison of 1500 inmates had one part-time psychiatrist, one full-time social worker is less than public prisons which are not themselves by great places by any means. so it's not like there's great mental health care angles there. but you know, the situation is much more dire. so the option for people having severe serious mental health issues, either depression or thoughts often times only happens on suicide watch so if a prisoner said he was suicidal, the prisoner was required to put him on suicide watchwhich is solitary confinement . he would be in a cell with no

books, no clothes. he would just have what's called a suicide blanket, it's a blanket that couldn't be torn and a blanket was guard was supposed to sit across and watch him all day so my first day on the job, i was put there . it's kind of the worst job in a prison so generally the new guys have to do it. so i would sit there, every15 minutes i didn't know what day we were doing . what theprisoner was doing . and there was one prisoner who i was watching, his name was damien and he, at one point was threatening to jump offthe bed and break his neck . he also just did not want me to be there. there were two prisoners i was watching. him and another prisoner who tried to get me to leave just stood there and masturbated for hours staring at me. it was not a nice situation. damien threatened to jump off the bed. i reported it as i was

supposed to. psychiatrist showed up six hours later and i talked to him and also the people on suicide watch argument worst food. they would be given what's called a suicide bag, a little brown bag lunch and declared value of that is for a day of those meals is below usda standards for its all-male. >> after i left the prison, i was contacted by damien's mom . it had come out in local media that i was a reporter and she saw that. and she asked me if i knew who he was and i told her that yes, i had watched him on suicide watch and it turned out he had committed suicide the time that he died he weighed 71 pounds area and he, something i learned later about him, i came back down

here and met his mom. he had documents of complaints that he had written. he had gone on hunger strike many times. he been on suicide watch many times and on hunger strike. sometimes protesting food and sometimes he was hunger striking to demand better mental health care. and you know, eventually he hung himself in his cell. the company, when they're in training they told us we watch these videos and one of the things they claim is that their rate of suicide is lower than in public prisons. so after i learned about damien and i came down here and did my research about him , i sent a public records request to the state of louisiana department of corrections and ask them how many suicides had occurred that year inthat prison and they said zero . what had happened was the

warden was able to grant him i guess parole when he was unconscious, in a coma. he was in a hospital sterilization, when he died he was no longer in the care of the prison of the company. >> so they kept it off the books essentially. >> you're talking about change. >> whether physical it's an area that the prior corporation sees them skimping on. >> the guys who i read about who had gotten his legs, i like much more about him but i saw many examples that he had serious medical situations and the thing is that here in louisiana if the company sends a prisoner out to hospital, they have to pay for it. they're reluctant to do that. i saw many people who were begging to go to the hospital

for serious heart problems, things like that and they wouldn't do it. >> and i asked a follow-up? >> i want to ask what are your thoughts on on the national student strike that recently ended. a lot of those men, all of them were just asking basic humanity, human rights, stop the violence and programs and rehabilitation and so there were a lot of hunger strikes and there's also the solidarity that came from detention centers where people that were detained at the border were also put in these forced labor. and so how can we actually challenge these structures so that people don't have to pretty much live this way because it's all for profit. how can we make this thing

with the prisoner part of the labor struggle because they are workers at the end of the day and a lot of their demands are about getting appropriate pay for their labor. >> i don't have the answer but there are tons of people who work on this, i'm sure many in the loop room . and the thing i'm good at is showing how terrible things are . some people might take other roles but the thing that stood out to me about the strike was when you look at these commands, they're so reasonable. it's like, let's not do work for $.10 an hour. it's just very basic things about, basic conditions but in the prison system they are

seen as so huge . it seemed that they were really effective in bringing that conversation do this national level. even the demands that stood out to me the most maybe because of the work that i was doing in the research was that one of the demands is an end to prison slavery is how they put it. a lot of people, they see that and they're like okay, that's exaggerated or whatever but this is not rhetorical, this connection between labor and prison. and the way that labor has evolved. what they're talking about, the way is that people are working for in a sense, they're not necessarily enforced to do it the way that prisons had been in the past but what does that mean? if you're in a prison and you want to call home, you want

to buy some basic supplies from the commissary, where's the line of being forced or not being forced? of course you're going to take a job if the job alternative is to sit in your cell area so, i think that's very important issue for sure. >>. >> talk about the federal level and how does that work? you're not going to privatize, no we are? >> so every state has their own potentially their own criminal justice system and then the federal government also has one so we in a way have 51 systems . so the federal government uses i don't know the exact number, about 12 private prisons . the obama administration basically said they were going to discontinue, not going to renew the contract when they were up for renewal. and you know, the thing with

executive orders is that another president can make another one so it will happen. >> it every state have private prisons? >> i don't know the exact breakdown but there are more prevalent in the south but in the north, it's also everything. >>. >> i need to shine a different life. you went into prison as a prison guard. i know from experience on the other side that your job was to dehumanize, demoralize and desensitize human beings. did it ever occur to you the effects that had on the inmates and the reason, there's another flipside of that. you talk about the effects on the men. but i find that out here in society, the effect on the women, we never really talk

about that. so society don't know that the women argues as personal play toys. women are raped by the guards. they have babies and get pregnant . they get stds. we get beaten. the treatment for the women is so intense that your psychologically damaged for the rest of your life. because if you've never witnessed a female being stopped on the ground by a guard with steel to toe boots, the blood was out of every holein her head , you can't imagine the effects that your job has on us. >> i can't imagine.

and the prison i was in, it was only men so there were female guards but the prison is on and so i didn't interact with women's prisons ever but you're right. part of the job is to dehumanize prisoners and that's a big part of training. there was this scene that always came up was about inmates manipulation and a drill bit into your head that prisoners are going to constantly be manipulating you and there's one lesson we had about this and the examples they gave was a prisoner being nice to you, a prisoner shouting at you, a prisoner complaining about another guard complimenting you on your job and it was a whole range of human interaction. that's not to say that prisoners don't manipulate guards, i did. you try to get what you can the effect of it is for us to

prepare us to separate ourselves from the prisoners and to see them as kind of a other than us and i think that in order to do that job, yeah. i think you have to do that on some level. it's built in to the job to dehumanize, you're locking people up every day. >> is incarceration about the parts ration equals recidivism. when you incarcerate, you dehumanize, demoralize and desensitize . you have thousands of cities all over the world known as prisons and jails, how many parts ration centers do you know mark we don't have them and the facts of the lack of the parts ration is that everybody in this room could become potential victims from

the incarceration of a person because the collateral consequences of a person that has been incarcerated when they come out, the overall mental instability of those people damages society but especially when you're talking about women. now you're talking about mothers and wives and sisters. when you dehumanize women, we don't know how to love anymore. we don't know how to nurture anymore. we don't know how to do the basic things when are supposed to do, thereforeour children are going to be affected and that's why our children, it will be impossible to be part of the penal system in the future >> . >> i think that the corporation , i'm you're talking about prisons which is one corner of the prison system and it's really a symptom of this much larger problem of mass incarceration and i think the private

prisons exist because we have this insanely overinflated prison system, 2 million people in prison and the state are shambling, how do we deal with this, how do we pay for the all this stuff? that's really the core of the issue is mass incarceration and that goes to much deeper things like policing. prosecutorial power, mentoring, racism and these are the things i think it gets too. >> follow-up question but i'm curious in reading the book, it comes to how clearly illegal prison system or the private system is in terms of not fulfilling legal requirements. >> for the incarcerated people and prison guards so i'm curious if there's any momentum at the state level

or local level to hold back these contracts to revoke the contracts for malfeasance. and then if there's any discussion among the prison guards, at least private prisons about unionizing or labor . i'm also struck that the pta are making nine dollars an hour while they're making 13. so of course the unions have been more of a conservative force program for promoting mass incarceration but i'm wondering if there's any more satisfaction than capturing these possibilities as a resource for the parts ration? >> i don't know. just from the view of when, i would say no but i don't know. there's somany, every present different . and i think these people are just there because they need a job and whatever but i never saw any kind of discussion about unionizing or anythinglike that . as in guard unions are like california where i live, they

are into a lot of bad stuff. and they make tons of money but they are like trying to prevent changes that would not have women shackled while giving birth and stuff like that. >> i don't know. maybe there's a way that they can be kind of focused in but i didn't see any kind of inkling about,other than simply the satisfaction . but i don't see them advocating for closing down prison or something. but i did hear a guard complain about drug criminalization and things like that. it's definitely a wide range of views. >> you said you were there for four months. can you talk, i'm curious about what did you to leave. and how that came about from the perspective of that

situation when you left area. >> i left because my colleague mother jones came to film and he was telling the prison at night and got arrested. work taking pictures. he got arrested and he was in jail overnight and they figured out through looking through his stop he had done an interview. so they figured out while us so as soon as he went to jail, we calculated. >> so it was a weird place to flee too. >> this focus on private prisons what washes the system and i wonder if we can talkabout your choice to focus on private prisons . >> he was saying that she wanted to focus on private prisons, like watches that kind of prison system as a whole.

i've written about public prisons also, solitary confinement. i guess when i thought about this idea of going private prisons, partially i was taught drawn to private prisons because there are more cut off from a lot of the outside more so than even public prisons. i also think that there's so many aspects to the prison system that areproblematic . i would never say that the public system is the goal or is great for anything. in fact, the history i write about is, it's not just leading to a private system, it's leading to our general resin system as this emergent side of slavery but i think if we're looking at conditions, i think for people who are living in prisons, the difference is in

conditions so places matter so when you compare 2 similar prisons of this size, there are many indicators for prisons. violence is worse, healthcare tends to be worse and there tend to be less asic services . so you know, i think that by having been a prisoner myself and being the vast difference between what books you have to read or like these little things. i think i know that these things that seem like little are not. and i also don't really think that there's really much danger in this country right now of their being too much focus on some aspect of the prisonsystem . i think we're kind of,

there's more attention being paid to prison than there was 10 years ago but i don't think that we're at risk of people being like, we solve this problem so it's all over. i think any way to get people to look at what's going on and a lot of the stuff that i write about and i point this out. certain things, they are just issues thatexist in the prison system. i was in a private prison , everything that happened there is because of profit motive or something. >>. >> going back to the prison system, did you notice with prison guards that there was any difference, that there was a difference between for the inmate and also the female guards? >> the situation of female guards is fraught honestly. >> i guess if i'm going to

generalize i would say i think that women guards tended to be tougher with the prisoners. and also they had to deal with a lot of sexual harassment. it was really common and no guards do but it was very common, especially in the night shifts. at a female guard generally the female guards that worked in this control room in the middle of the unit, they're not like out on the floor . but there in the middle and it was really common or the middle of the night to come up to the end of this. and masturbate. so those kind of things were pretty common and also i saw this prison administration very hesitant to deal with thatstuff . a lot of it would get like

swept under the rug and also sexual harassment between guards area male guards to female guards. female guards complain about having prisoner complaint months ago about being harassed by a staffmember and something was happening . >> so that then created a dynamic where they had to be more harassment. >> i guess that's one way to look at it. i don't know. >> the meat to moving. [inaudible] >> you mention the parent of one of the prisoners contacting you, i'm just wondering what else have happened is writing the book in terms of any changes in that prison itself for people reaching out to you or what had happened since you've written the book . >> there's nothing that i had noticed but this article came out a couple years ago.

after i left the prison, a few weeks after i left the company gave up its contract. so it's now one by another private prison company called lasalle and the state lowered its per diem rates quite substantially. i think it's twentysomething dollars now. so my understanding is that when it's run more like a jail, it's still a prison but more services were cut. a call that i think the head of the department of correction called it lock and key or something like that. basically just defeating them and locking them up now. >>. >> i don't know. i did get contacted by a lot of people after this book came out andi included a lot of stuff in the book . people that had been away in prisoners, guards and also people that worked in other prisons through the country

including administrators and you know, people generally would say that it was just where i worked area. >>. >> one last question back there.>>. >>. [inaudible] >>. >>. [inaudible] the majority of

people cannot control their emotions in prison and what you said about the conservation, i'm a military veteran. we treated people that came back from vietnam as prisoners and you can't make an analogy between them and the first time i ever, pows came back from vietnam and talk about your watson, you go there. >>. >> thanks everyone. >>. [applause] >> we're not done, we're going to do some book signings over the table as

soon as we can move things around so we will formalizeto the back . we do have books at the front counter and on table . i hope you will get a copy and bring it home and read it. start tonight. thank you so mucharea . >> you're watching tv. did you know you can listen on the go. download the c-span radio cspan2 from your device area on the weekends, click on the cspan2 button to hear everything airing on tv live. >> welcome everyone to kramerbooks, thank you for coming .i would like to welcome jackie to kramer books. he is california's congresswoman and the recognized champion of women's rights, privacyand consumer safety . she's included in this 2019 list of top influencers. transforming americanpolitics .