“I should tell you upfront that the job only pays $9 an hour, but the prison is in the middle of a national forest. When I call Winn Correctional Center in Winnfield, Louisiana, the HR lady who answers is chipper and has a smoky Southern voice. They didn’t even ask about the time I was arrested for shoplifting when I was 19. They didn’t ask about my job history, my current employment with the Foundation for National Progress, the publisher of Mother Jones, or why someone who writes about criminal justice in California would want to move across the country to work in a prison. They weren’t interested in the details of my résumé. Within two weeks of filling out its online application, using my real name and personal information, several CCA prisons contacted me, some multiple times. And even if I could get uncensored information from private prison inmates, how would I verify their claims? I keep coming back to this question: Is there any other way to see what really happens inside a private prison?ĬCA certainly seemed eager to give me a chance to join its team. Their records often aren’t subject to public access laws CCA has fought to defeat legislation that would make private prisons subject to the same disclosure rules as their public counterparts. Private prisons are especially secretive. When prisons do let reporters in, it’s usually for carefully managed tours and monitored interviews with inmates.
As a journalist, it’s nearly impossible to get an unconstrained look inside our penal system. I started applying for jobs in private prisons because I wanted to see the inner workings of an industry that holds 131,000 of the nation’s 1.6 million prisoners. From the editor: Why we sent a reporter to work as a private prison guard
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