They listen to me, and a part of me likes that.” I tell inmates to take their hats off as they enter. Initially reluctant to flaunt his authority, he begins to get used to being able to order people around: “I stand tall, broaden my shoulders, and stride up and down the floor, making enough eye contact with people to show I’m not intimidated but not holding it long enough to threaten them. One instructor he encounters tells the cadets not to bother trying to break up a fight between prisoners, because the guards aren’t getting paid enough for that: “So if them fools want to cut each other, well, happy cutting.” The instructor also reassures the guards in training that he’ll have their backs no matter what they do: “If you are an officer and you do something 100 percent wrong, I’m going to take your side right on the spot.”Īlthough he finds his new job more difficult than he’d hoped, Bauer continues to show up for work - armed with a hidden camera and audio recorder. A quick Google search of Bauer’s name would have revealed that he was an investigative reporter, but CCA didn’t know or didn’t care he was hired quickly to be a prison guard at Winn Correctional Center in northern Louisiana.īauer writes that he first got hint of a problem almost immediately after he started the training program for his new job. The nation’s second-biggest private prison company, CCA operates nearly 100 correctional facilities across the country. In 2014, Bauer applied for a job with the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), which has since rebranded itself as CoreCivic.

Shane bauer american prison