But, as Mother Jones Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery notes in an essay accompanying this project, such undercover investigations have grown increasingly rare-in part because of fear of legal repercussions. undercover ethicsįrom the muckraker era to the 1970s, immersive reporting-by journalists such as Nellie Bly, Ted Conover, and Ben Bagdikian-shined light in some of our country’s darkest corners by going deep inside secretive institutions. “My Four Months as a Private Prison Guard” is a raw, gripping chronicle of both a company’s struggle to maintain control of a facility stretched to the limit by cost-cutting and mismanagement, and Bauer’s own fight to maintain his humanity in a system that is equally destructive of both inmates and guards. That began a four-month odyssey during whichīauer witnessed stabbings, an escape, lockdowns-and his own transformation into a prison guard, with reactions and feelings he barely recognized as his own. He was quickly hired for a $9-an-hour job at a medium-security prison in Louisiana. In December 2014, Bauer-using his own name and employment history-applied for a job as a prison guard for Corrections Corporation of America (now known as CoreCivic), the country’s second-largest private prison company. That’s why Shane Bauer concluded that the only way to truly understand what was happening on the inside was to go there himself.

Access to prisons for journalists has become increasingly difficult over the years, and private prisons are not subject to some of the already tenuous disclosure requirements that apply to state- and federal-run facilities. Prison reform has become a major topic of national conversation, yet details about what happens inside private prisons-which house 9 percent of the nation’s inmates-have remained largely hidden from public scrutiny. The world of corporate-run prisons has long been shrouded in secrecy.

American Prison by Shane Bauer