Street Roots • Sept. 21-27, 2018
Conversation
Page 11
PRISON, from page 10
He started a career in the old model, and
when that stopped being profitable, he came
up with a new version. He co-founded the
Corrections Corporation of America (now
CoreCivic) and figured out a way to
capitalize on the over-population of our
prison system.
E.G.: How do you see his background and
prior attitude toward inmates playing out in
CCA prisons today?
S.B.: I think it’s a reflection of a
mentality where inmates are intended to get
a handful of people rich. This has been the
mentality of prison systems, especially in
the South, for most of American history.
The model of CoreCivic, of the GEO
Group, is still based on this idea. If these
companies are not making profit, they’ll
cease to exist
One thing that was interesting in going
through the history of these former
versions of private prisons that we had in
the 19th century was that the debates that
existed around companies and prisons were
very similar to what they are today. You
would find op-eds where people were
arguing that the profit motive and
rehabilitation are at odds with each other.
As soon as a prison is intended to make
money, then whoever is running the prison
is going to cut corners wherever they can,
whether that’s on health care, food, security.
It’s built into that model that the well-being
of prisoners is going to be a lesser priority,
and I think that’s- the same today.
E.G.: W hat you witnessed in the span of
fo u r months, I think, would be shocking to
even some o f the harshest critics o f private
prisons. W hat did you personally fin d most
surprising or disturbing during your time
working there?
S.B.: I knew that there were issues with
these prisons, but I was just not prepared
for how chaotic and almost amateur the
place would be. There’s always a sense of
chaos there, and a sense that the company
was not in control, and that it didn’t need to
be. This has worked since the ’80s, and
states are saving some amount of money
and they just kind of let things go. The
prisoners were very violent, I saw people
stab each other.
One thing I was surprised by was I didn’t
expect to find that the guards themselves
were also being exploited by the system. I
saw guards and inmates bond at times over
their shared disdain for the company. The
guards made $9 an hour when I started
there. They were poor people from the area,
just like a lot of the prisoners were, some of
them even knew some of thè prisoners from
their childhood. You would hear guards say,
“I could have ended up on the other side.”
The guards go home at night, but they, in
many ways, also felt trapped there. They
didn’t have other options and they were
working in the prison not because they
wanted to, but because they just didn’t have
anywhere else to turn, so they would take
this very dangerous, very stressful job, for
very low pay.
E.G.: Do you think prisoners a t CoreCivic
facilities are treated better or worse than you
yourself were treated when you were held
prisoner in Iran?
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
A labor sympathy parade in New York City, 1916.
S.B.: It’s so hard to compare these two
me in a unit of 350 inmates. So it was
systems. The prison I was in, in Iran, was a
impossible for us to do what we were
political prison, so it was a different thing. I
supposed to do there.
was in prison with activists, members of A1
There was this kind of disconnect
Qaeda, people were tortured, we had to
between what I was thinking and how I was
wear blindfolds when we left our cells, it
acting, because I Understood that the prison
was a very highly controlled environment.
was a terrible place, and the conditions
Winn was, in some ways, the opposite.
were horrible for prisoners, and if I was in
Where Evin in Iran was highly controlled,
their position I would be very angry. But at
Winn was out of
the same time, I’m a
control. It was running
human being who is
interacting every day
rampant Every day, we
with them and wearing
didn’t know what was
^Ms
oon S
As s sooa
as a p ris o n is .
a uniform, and I am the
coming.
latended to tta k e money,
one who is locking
^P risoners would
theffiwhoe,
the» whoever Is rnnnlng
them in, and there is
blow up because they
,«
the p prison
weren’t getting
the
n s o i.. Is going t© oat
going to be tension
comers wit©
wherever they can, between us. When I
recreation time
corners
have a problem, or
whether lit
that?s on health
because there wasn’t
whether
enough staff to watch
c a r e , food,
f o o d , security. It's b u ilt some prisoner has a
care,
over them, or their
I n to that
(Jbal model that the well« problem with me and is
Into
threatening me, then I
classes were cancelled
in
being » ©I , * prisoners is going have this personal
because there was no
to
one to teach them that
tO. be
b® a
® lesser
l ®®8® priority, and I reaction to that person
th
in k that's
day. The prison would
thinfe
thBt s the
t same today." and there inevitably
ends up being battles
occasionally go into
between us, for power
lockdown because
and control and
there weren’t enough
authority.
people to run the
I found myself becoming very
place.
authoritarian, and at times, almost obsessed
And as much, the violence between
with the power dynamics that were
prisoners was way higher.
happening between me and other prisoners,
E.G.: I w ant to talk about your own
and my need to maintain control. It got to
transformation in ju st fo u r months. A t one
the point where I didn’t like the person I
point you mention the fam ous Stanford prison
was in the prison. I would feel like I was a
experiment, where students playing guards did
different person inside than I was when I
horrible things to students playing prisoners.
went home.
This experiment really shocked people and was
cut short, but after reading your book, I ’m left
with the impression that it was less o f an
experiment and more o f a representation o f
what is actually happening in America’s
prisons every day. W hat do you think?
S.B.: I will say that I related a lot to that
study. I won’t say that every guard has the
same experience that I did, but I was really
surprised at how much I changed in that
position, and how quickly. It really showed
me how much your situation determines
how you behave, how you think and how you
react to what’s around you.
It is very difficult to work in a prison,
especially one that is run like this, where I
had one other guard working a floor with
E.G.: I t seemed like some o f the guards
entered the prison with a kind o f cavalier
attitude. D id you notice the same sort o f
transformation that you went through
happening with any o f the other cadets that
you started with?
S.B.: I did, yeah. Many of the cadets - at
least half - quit very quickly, and that was
common. But there was one, he started
after me, he was very nice, trying to be an
easy going guard, just trying to treat
prisoners as humans, which a lot of guards
did when they started. He became really
hardened very quickly, and that was
common.
The other thing that was common is a lot
of guards, when that started happening,
they just quit They realized it wasn’t worth
it, for them.
And I think guards often went in one of
two directions. There is a pressure from
both the side of inmates and the side of
prison administration to basically join their
team. You would assume that a guard would
be on the side of the administration, but
that’s not necessarily the case.
Either they would decide they wanted to
be liked by the prisoners, and treat them
humanely. Sometimes they would bring
things in for prisoners, drugs, cellphones or
they would quit because they couldn’t deal
with treating people in the way that you
kind of have to if you do that job. Or, they
go to the side of the administration and they
kind of turn off that part of themselves that
might feel guilty about punishing somebody
or forcing somebody to do something that
they don’t want to do. Then they just kind of
become numb to the human side of it and
just do the job.
E.G.: I was hoping you m ight be able to p u t
what you learned about CoreCivic in the
context o f the ramped-up immigration efforts
taking place in this country right now. Do you
know i f these detention centers are run any
differently than the prison you visited?
S.B.: I’ve never been in any of the
immigrant detention centers. Over half of .
them are run by private companies. The
vast majority of the largest detention
centers are privatized.
I did meet some guards who were filling
in at Winn who worked in (immigrant)
detention centers, and they would complain
about not being able to use force on the
detainees. There are some different
regulations because the detainees are not
convicted of crimes, necessarily.
They would complain about how it was
harder to use pepper spray on them, and
stuff like that. But they’re essentially being
imprisoned, they can’t leave. There’s been
hunger strikes, there’s been riots in these
detention centers over the same issues that
have come up in the private prisons: poor
health care, poor security, inadequate food.
It seems that a lot of the same issues apply,
which would make sense because it’s
essentially the same model that the
companies are applying. They are still trying
to service their bottom line. They’re trying
to cut the same comers that they do in a
prison.
E.G.: Is there anything we didn’t talk about
that you’d really like to drive home about
private prisons operating in America?
S.B.: Something that I really learned in
writing this book, after the initial article in
Mother Jones, and just researching history,
was that I think we should understand, is
that while today private prisons represent a
relatively small part of the overall prison
population, the vast majority of the history
of prisons in America has been driven by
profit I think it’s important for us to dig
into this history and understand how we got
to where we’re at today, and much of that
explanation lies in the fact that people have
been trying to make money from people in
this country who are not free, whether they
were enslaved or incarcerated people.
emily@streetroots.org; Twitter @greenwrites