Prison, Inc.

A Convict Exposes Life Inside a Private Prison

K.C. Carceral, Thomas J. Bernard

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2005
• Print ISBN: 9780814799550
• eBook ISBN: 9780814790472
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

Prison, Inc. provides a first-hand account of life behind bars in a controversial new type of prison facility: the private prison. These for-profit prisons are becoming increasingly popular as state budgets get tighter. Yet as privatization is seen as a necessary and cost-saving measure, not much is known about how these facilities are run and whether or not they can effectively watch over this difficult and dangerous population. For the first time, Prison, Inc. provides a look inside one of these private prisons as told through the eyes of an actual inmate, K.C. Carceral who has been in the prison system for over twenty years.

PART I

Welcome to Enterprise

1

The Politics of Enterprise Prison

Welcome to Enterprise prison. We do it cheaper and better than your state system. Enjoy your stay.

—Rob Robey, Drug Treatment Manager and
Former Insurance Salesman

I don’t remember seeing Enterprise in the brochure when I was sentenced to prison. No one told me I would be down South doing time.

—A New Arrival

After eighteen years in the Northern State Prison System, I was waiting to be shipped to yet another prison. This would be the ninth prison I had entered since my incarceration, but this prison would be nothing like the previous ones.

At one time I had the security of knowing I would remain in Northern State and I had the opportunity, if I complained enough, to be sent to a prison near my family. But that had changed. The old days were long gone. Lateral transfers, where the state moved prisoners from one prison to another at the same security level within the state, had ended unless the system had a reason to ship an inmate to a certain prison. Family ties and family values were no longer a concern. It didn’t matter where your family was located—the state shipped you where was convenient. The staff kept saying: We’re just taking in too many offenders. And now Governor Strictland had announced that prisoners would be required to serve a part of their sentence in out-of-state facilities that were run by a private profit-making corporation.

It was no secret that Strictland was tough on crime. He had been governor of Northern State for fifteen years. During his service, sentences had gotten longer, more people were being locked up, and there were fewer paroles.

“Anonymous Numbered Inmate, report to the receiving building,” the ceiling speaker blurted out. That would be me, I smiled to myself.

* * *

Of course, Anonymous N. Inmate is not my real name. Like other prisoners, I have a normal name. But after years and years in the prison system, I feel anonymous—my record file is more significant than my life. I feel like an identification number rather than a human being—my prison number is more important than I am. I feel that I am just another prisoner in the vast pool of prisoners, an anonymous number among the over two million anonymous numbers who are incarcerated in this country.

And so in this book, I call myself a name that reflects my feeling: Anonymous Numbered Inmate. In normal day-to-day life of prison, other prisoners call me by my first name, Anonymous, while staff usually address me by my last name, Inmate.

* * *

My name had been blurted over the loudspeaker, and so I gathered up the few things that I hadn’t already packed for my long bus ride.

“Did you check out and sign out?” the state officer asked me as I exited.

“Yes,” I replied, “I turned in all my state-issued clothing and bedding.”

Life was different now. Doing time was changing. The staff seemed more vindictive, and the prisoners seemed more willing to accept this treatment. All the prisoners were scared of being placed in 24-hour lockup.

I had a serious attitude since I was sent back to medium-security from a minimum-security placement.¹ My family was upset with me because I had gotten into trouble there. People out there in the larger society often think minimum-security prisons are country clubs but they are far from this. Besides being sent back to medium, I also had received a longer parole “defer”—i.e., the parole board would not hear my case again for twenty-four months instead of the usual twelve months.

After being back in medium security about three months, I had to drop the bombshell on my family: I was reclassified to be sent out to an out-of-state private prison. Reclassification was instant. It wasn’t Do you meet the criteria for placement. Instead, it was How do we rewrite your paperwork so you fit the classification. Nothing was going to prevent this move.

Private prisons are owned and operated by profit-making corporations. The corporation charges the state a fixed amount for each day that an inmate spends in the private prison—a per diem. The corporation claims it charges less than it costs the state to feed and house the inmate. It also claims that it can provide the same services that the state does and still turn a profit. The question, of course, is whether this is actually true.

* * *

It was a long walk across the receiving building’s yard. I had heard plenty of rumors about bad things in the private prisons, and no rumors about anything good. I did not want to go and I was emotionally stirred up. But I had no choice in the matter. Some guys snapped, yet that did not stop their transfer. Others whined and cried. I just accepted the fact that I had to go. At least no one was coming back from these private prisons in body bags.

Once inside the receiving building, I was stripped, processed, and placed on a converted bus like livestock. I was a commodity that had been contracted for payment. I was a product in the free enterprise system. I was on my way to a newly built private prison—Enterprise Correctional Facility—that was owned and operated by the Venture Correctional Corporation.

* * *

Now I was sitting on the bus, waiting to leave the home I had known and was comfortable with, heading for who knows what. Man, wish they would get this rocket rolling, I thought.

“My name is Tex,” the fella next to me said, breaking into my thoughts.

“I’m Anonymous.”

“You look like you’re in deep thought. It’s going to be a long ride.” Tex was just the typical. He had long hair and a beard. He had an average build and his face was weather-beaten with age.

“Just don’t want to take this trip. I want to go out the door but not this way.”

“Ain’t many of us going out that door. We’re all going out of state instead. My people tripped when I told them.”

“I know what you mean …”

“This shit can’t last long,” he ignored my reply. “My wife was upset but I told her they’ll be bringing us back within two years.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. I really didn’t want to sit here and discuss the finer aspects of the prison system’s problems. I had my own problems.

“Someone ought to get the governor,” Tex smiled and moved his eyebrows up and down. “Strictland is pimping the state with this tough-on-crime shit.”

“Tex, you sound like you want some more time!” I smiled and left it at that. I nudged my glasses up, stretched my legs under the seat in front of me and prepared for my trip.

The truth was that I felt the same way. I came back from minimum-security placement after sitting there for three years. In some ways I was glad to be sent back to medium. In minimum, cats were leaving out the door every day, but I never went anywhere. Three long years of going nowhere—I got so sick of it.

Still, it was hard for me to think about this. Never in my life will I forget my mom placing her hand on mine in the visiting room after I was sent back: “Anonymous, don’t you want to get out? I’m getting older. I want to see my son again.” Those words of love were the hardest part for me to live with. I wanted to get out, but I just self-destructed. I gave up on myself and stopped caring about the door. The lure of the system was part of it—the only life I knew.

* * *

The bus’s engine kicked on and we started rolling. I was on my way to Fisherville, in Southern State. I really had very little idea where that was. I had never been down South, and all those Southern states—Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi—sounded pretty much alike to me.

To deal with the surplus population, Governor Strictland decided to send thousands of prisoners and millions of dollars out of the state. First the prisoners and the money were sent down South to county jails. But these places didn’t have medical care and some of them had correctional officers who seemed to believe that beating prisoners was a part of the job. So eventually the state contracted with a private corporation that operated its own prisons in several Southern states. I was being sent six hundred miles away to Enterprise Correctional Facility, in Fisherville:

Southern Daily Times, May 26: Enterprise Correctional Facility is about to have an impact on the tiny, job-starved community of Fisherville. Convicted criminals from Northern State will begin to arrive next week.

“Look at our community, we’re dying,” said Bertha Johnson, a daycare owner. “I hope the 300 new prison employees will help fill my daycare.”

Fisherville mirrors many Southern State communities missed by the booming national economy. Venture Correctional Corporation previously built another prison in New Kirk in 1995.

“We’re glad to have Venture Correctional in New Kirk,” said Jane Anderson, city recorder and councilwoman. “We have opened two new banks, a hotel and restaurant, a shopping mall and 35 new homes. They pay us $100,000 annual property taxes and we collect anywhere from $70,000 to $90,000 a year in taxes on the collect phone system which the inmates use.”

“This could not have happened without Venture,” said Mayor Bobby Hunter. “We’re glad to have prisoners.”

Enterprise charged $50 per day for each prisoner. Eventually, Northern State became their biggest cash cow, writing them a check for approximately $215,000 per day or $79,000,000 per year. The odd thing was Governor Strictland would not allow Venture Correctional Corporation to build private prisons in Northern State—that was unacceptable. Yet it was acceptable to send Northern State prisoners to private prisons in other states across the country.

“Shit, these prisons are all about money now-a-days,” Tex interrupted my thoughts again. “It’s all about getting that tax money. They got like thirty other companies that are selling to these private prisons—everything from food to aspirin. These private prisons are a cash-generating welfare machine for lots of folks. People are getting rich off us. I told my old lady she should move down to Southern State with me to get a job.”

“There you go,” I agreed.

“She still got pretty mad. I got thirty years for armed robbery. They offered a deal for five but my lawyer said, ‘no.’ So I went to trial. Oops—I guess the damn judge thought I should have taken the deal.”

* * *

The converted bus held forty prisoners and six security guards employed by the corporation. At first, everyone thought it was great to get into a bus with cloth seats and a video system, to laugh at the Southern boys as they got stuck in the snow when we were leaving, and to do 75 to 85 mph down the road. Yet by the time we rolled into Enterprise, everyone was tired, cranky, and mad.

We had spent eighteen hours in a seat, cuffed and shackled. By the sixth hour my legs went numb and my butt really hurt. After that it just got worse. The seats were so tight together that my knees rested in the back of the seat in front of me. When we finally arrived, it took me several minutes before I could stand up.

“This really sucks,” one man said.

“My ass hurts,” a few others exclaimed.

There was a Black officer in the tower strutting a twelve-gauge pump. Two Black female officers were operating the front gate. Three others were waiting for us by a loading dock door. We didn’t go through a prisoner entrance—we walked through a loading dock like cattle. We were led down a couple of hallways still in irons. There were more Black guards. In Northern State, all one sees are White guards. Here, all they had were Black guards, and mostly females to boot.

“I never seen so many employed sisters in my life,” a taller fellow commented.

“Come on now, move along,” the officer was saying as we walked. Finally, their human cargo was unloaded!

Reflections

Four sometimes-opposing forces would shape my new life in the private prison.

First were the prisoners. No one wanted to be shipped out-of-state. Everyone seemed to believe that the laws were being violated somehow. Most felt a great deal of rage over being sent so far from home. Even before the busses got rolling, the prisoners were fixated on being shipped out-of-state and talked about it all the time.

Second was the Northern State Department of Corrections. Governor Strictland had implemented the toughest laws the state had ever seen. The Department tried to build its way out of the ever-expanding prisoner population, but it could not keep up. Taxpayers began to balk at the cost of the vast expansion of the prison system. So the Department turned to the private sector for more beds. They wanted prison beds as cheap as they could get them in order to claim they were saving tax dollars. So the prisoners poured out of Northern State by the busload.

Third was the small town of Fisherville. The new prison meant jobs, and jobs meant millions of dollars for the local economy. The new prison also meant new tax revenues—it was owned by a private corporation and so paid property taxes. Fisherville and Southern State gave the corporation lots of tax breaks to get them to build in Fisherville, but those revenues could be partially reclaimed by taxing the prisoners’ phone calls back to Northern State. Prisoners’ families would make up part of that tax revenue.

Finally, of course, was Venture Correctional Corporation. The corporation was determined to turn a profit on its new prison. Thus, it did only what it was required to do by its contract with Northern State. Everything that it was required to do—constructing the facility, hiring and paying staff, providing services to the inmates—was done as cheaply as possible.

These four sometimes-opposing forces would shape the politics of Enterprise Prison and my life over the next four years. I was entering the most violent prison I would ever experience.

2

Orientation

Come on, Anonymous, you are too programmed. These private folks don’t want that. If they really investigated something, they might actually find out the truth.

—Double-Dee

The motherfucker comes to rec with that touchy-feely shit. That day he picked the wrong motherfucker to harass. They beat him down.

—Cash

As I looked at my new home, I could see the place was built cheap. Very cheap! Everything was concrete or steel. Most of the concrete was prefabricated and trucked in. There were cracks everywhere—not hairline cracks but cracks so big you could put your finger in them. Later, when summer came, I learned this allowed for the invasion of bugs, especially ants. I never knew there could be so many ants!

Then there was the concrete dust—it was everywhere. Many floors were poured and dried so they looked like oatmeal. Some cells didn’t have sealer on the floor. I spent the day sweeping and mopping, sweeping and mopping, trying to remove the dust. But it did little good—every time I got done, more dust seemed to rise off the floor.

And then there were the walls. Some cells only had primer on the walls and no paint. Other cells had one wall that was primed whereas the ot...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• PART I: Welcome to Enterprise
• PART II: Guerrilla Warfare
• PART III: My Tour
• PART IV: An Exercise in Futility
• PART V: Taking Control
• PART VI: Analysis
• Notes
• Glossary
• About the Author and the Editor