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Monday, 27 June 2016

American reporter spends four months working undercover in a private prison

The best thing to read on the internet at the moment, even though it is definitely not for everyone, is an intense piece of investigative journalism by Mother Jones reporter Shane Bauer, who went undercover working as a guard in a private prison in Louisiana. At 36,000 words, this reads more like a short story than an article, but it is deeply engrossing. Please, however, be warned, everything horrible that you imagine that goes on in prison, really does go on in prison, so you may want to save this until after iftar. “When CCA [the company that runs the prison where Bauer works] shares appeared on the NASDAQ stock exchange in 1986, the company was operating two juvenile detention centers and two immigrant detention centers. Today, it runs more than 60 facilities… In 2015, CCA reported USD 1.9 bn in revenue; it made more than USD 221 mn in net income.” (Read My four months as a private prison guard)

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