Two Faces of the American Prison

1001 Books To Read Before Your Kindle Battery Dies, Part 114
Chris Hedges, Our Class: Trauma and Transformation in an American Prison, and Shane Bauer, American Prison: A Reporter's Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment

At approximately the same time in the early 2010s, two very different journalists walked into two prisons a thousand miles apart. Chris Hedges, a former New York Times war correspondent and Presbyterian minister, began teaching an extension course for Princeton University at East Jersey State Prison in Rahway, New Jersey. Shane Bauer, from Mother Jones magazine, went undercover as a corrections officer at Winn Correctional Center in Winnfield, Louisiana.

Hedges’ and Bauer’s experiences weren’t identical. The two journalists didn’t meet prisoners and prison administration in comparable ways. One prison was privatized, the other state-run. And one raised prisoners’ aspirations, while the other found himself drawn into the system breaking prisoners down. Yet their stories are similar enough to highlight the structural problems with American criminal justice, and to remind readers that prison changes both the incarcerated, and the jailers.

Chris Hedges carried an armload of books and boundless ideals into Rahway, informed by James Baldwin and Michelle Alexander. He wanted to equip his students to understand their situation, and make better choices. But he discovered students who overcame significant barriers just to qualify for his class. Rather than teach them their own social conditions, Hedges realized he’d been placed in this classroom to empower his students to tell their own story, both to each other and to the world.

Shane Bauer chose Winn Correctional Center basically because he submitted several job applications, and Winn answered first. He received four short weeks’ training before Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) entrusted him to safeguard some of Louisiana’s most violent chronic offenders. He found an entire prison, staff and prisoners alike, short-handed, cash-strapped, and demoralized. No university extension classes at Winn; money had run out for rehabilitative services.

Besides being journalists, these two authors share significant background experiences. Both covered the overthrow of Saddam Hussein; Hedges lost his prestigious Times job because he insisted on calling out Bush administration injustices by name. Both were held prisoner in Iran’s notorious prisons—Bauer describes his imprisonment in some detail, and wrote a previous book about it, while Hedges fleetingly mentions his imprisonment, raising more questions than answers.

But both authors share a dedication to letting the story unfold in its own terms. They let their subjects tell their own stories, in their own words, without imposing a preexisting narrative arc onto them. They describe letting prisoners—and, in Bauer’s case, prison administration—get into their heads and change their minds. Humans adapt ourselves to systems, even when those systems are toxic.

Hedges’ students mostly lack academic backgrounds, so rather than papers, he has them write dramatic scenes. He bolsters this with readings from playwrights like Amiri Baraka, Miguel Piñero, and August Wilson, who have distinct experiences with segregated society and state incarceration. To Hedges’ surprise, his students prove themselves excellent writers, with distinct voices and a strong personal spin. He realizes this class is destined to collaborate and write a play.

CCA is supposed to provide Bauer with four weeks of police-level training. However, he finds himself having to assist behind the wall before his training is up. Head counts, contraband searches, and other nickel-and-dime rules procedures mount up. His job mostly involves enforcing rules which prisoners must obey because they’re rules. Once inside, Bauer finds himself horse-trading favors and overlooking infractions, because keeping order matters more than ensuring justice.

Despite their significant overlap, these authors don’t tell identical stories. Hedges describes almost no interaction with prison administration, while Bauer almost entirely recounts conflicts between the incarcerated and the system. This means they have very different experiences. Hedges emerges from class with a more refined, more nuanced understanding of prisoners, eager to return and continue teaching classes to the disfranchised.

By contrast, Bauer recounts himself becoming less tolerant and forgiving, more inclined to bring the hammer down on prisoners for infractions, real or imagined. Early on, he remains progressive-minded and eager to help prisoners rehabilitate. As he remains in authority, however, and maintains the delicate balance between the state’s rehabilitative mission and CCA’s profit motive, he becomes increasingly violent. His loved ones become frightened of him.

Both journalists match the personal with the structural. Hedges describes the social forces, like poverty and overpolicing, that drove his students into prison. Bauer describes the history of American incarceration, which has often been privatized and profit-driven, usually with disastrous consequences. But both authors have the greatest impact when their stories are personal, intimate. Broken systems consist of broken individuals, and vice versa. Their stories are haunting and powerful.