American Prison: A Reporter’s Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment

In the pre-Civil War years, New Orleans debated building its own penitentiary, but many Southerners opposed the idea. If the penitentiary delivered equal opportunity punishment— subjecting white and Black Americans to the same hard labor for crimes committed—then the institution would subvert the notion of white superiority. Furthermore, some doubted the reformers’ claim that the penitentiary was more humane. However, when New Orleans jails became overcrowded, taxing the state’s financial resources, the thought of a profit-generating penal system became irresistible.

Conditions in the Baton Rouge penitentiary were severe, with prohibitions on singing or dancing, looking at visitors, and speaking to guards. The hours were long, and the labor was hard, but the prison turned a profit. When the state mechanized prison labor and provided a direct pipeline from Southern cotton fields to prison looms, the efficiency generated “more than $5000 ($135,000 in 2018 dollars)” (79). However, when the economy crashed in 1837, the state could no longer afford to maintain its penitentiary, so it handed the reins to a private company. Unlike slaveowners who had an incentive to keep their slaves healthy and working, the administrators of the Baton Rouge penitentiary had no such obligations, and convicts were employed for some of the most dangerous work, like building levees. Inside the prison, conditions were just as harsh: Convicts were subject to brutal punishments for even slight infractions.

Privatization of the penitentiary was a success, and soon the state ramped up the scale of production. However, the inmate population wasn’t large enough to keep up with demand. After registering complaints with the state, the prison population increased by 50 percent. Soon, industrialization fervor took hold across the South with several states following New Orleans’s lead. The potential for profit eclipsed everything, including any sense of justice or rehabilitation.

Bauer and his fellow cadets take a personality test to help the administrators find the best fit for them. “Gold” personalities, for example, value rules; “orange” personalities are spontaneous. Bauer’s result is “green” which signifies he is analytical and curious, a rarity for this job, and Miss Blanchard admits there is no clear fit for him. She also says that over time personalities tend to shift toward gold, a comment Bauer finds disturbing. He always assumed personalities are fixed attributes, but as the famous 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment shows, personalities can easily change given the right external circumstances. In that study, student volunteers were divided into two groups: guards and prisoners. In an imaginary prison setting, lead researcher Philip Zimbardo observed student guards becoming genuinely brutal with the “inmates.” The study, intended to last two weeks, was ended early because the participants were under so much psychological strain.

During his third week of training, Bauer works in the chow hall, assigning tables and monitoring inmates’ eating time. One inmate refuses to sit where Bauer assigns him, and a brief power struggle ensues. Bauer tries to “project confidence,” and eventually the inmate complies. For a moment, Bauer enjoys the power, striding confidently among the tables and “making enough eye contact with people to show I’m not intimidated but not holding it long enough to threaten them” (86). Cognizant of the shift in his own personality, he backs off, letting inmates sit where they choose and giving them enough time to finish eating.

The following morning, Bauer brings his pen/audio recorder into the prison for the first time. That day’s training covers “use-of-force” policy. The NRA-certified instructor informs them that use of deadly force is justified if imminent danger is present. In classic circular logic, imminent danger is defined as “a level of danger that justifies the use of deadly force” (88). They are told to shoot any attacker, even if he is unarmed, not once but multiple times. The instructor then tells the cadets how “easy” it is for a CO to lose his right to carry a gun, spinning an odd, cautionary tale of domestic abuse. If your “better half” starts an argument, he warns, just leave until “she simmers down” (90).

Later, Bauer, Miss Blanchard, and another cadet tour the barn office which houses the horses—which are no longer used—and the guard and tracking dogs. The office is staffed by older COs who have seen budget cuts deplete the staff and work programs. They wax nostalgic about the days when more liberal use of force was tolerated. One of the COs relates a story about an inmate being used for dog training. Sent into the woods in a “bite suit,” the inmate gets too close to the pursuing dogs, resulting in severe lacerations of his face and throat. The guards laugh it off.

Four weeks in, his training complete, Bauer takes his final exam. It is comprehensive and “intimidating,” but Miss Blanchard assures them that no one has ever been dismissed for failing the exam.

Historically, most Southern states did not imprison recalcitrant enslaved people, allowing the plantation owners to mete out their own punishments. Louisiana, however, sentenced some enslaved people to its penitentiary, compensating the owners $300 for the loss of property. When prison officials integrated the inmates by gender, with Black women alongside the men, many became pregnant. In 1848, the state legislature passed a law requiring that any children born in prison would be raised by the mother until age ten, at which point the child would become a ward of the state and auctioned off, the revenue used to fund schools for white children. By the time the Louisiana state penitentiary was taken over by Union troops, the state had made “$7591 from the enslaved offspring of incarcerated mothers, roughly $200,000 in 2018 dollars” (97).

During the Civil War, the penitentiary produced enormous quantities of goods for the war effort. When Union troops drove the Confederate Army out of Baton Rouge, they assumed control of the prison, turning it into a Union Army factory. When the Confederates counterattacked four months later, Union forces withdrew, but not before freeing the inmates and drafting them into service. The penitentiary was burned to the ground. After the war, a Louisiana civil engineer named Samuel Lawrence James saw the limitless possibility of convict leasing. With so many former enslaved people now free and jobless, many would end up incarcerated. James imagined sprawling new antebellum plantations turning massive profits using the free labor of inmates: “The whole prison system could be run as a business. And it would all be for him” (99).