Shane Bauer

Shane Bauer received the 2019 RFK Book Award for American Prison.

In 2014, award-winning journalist Shane Bauer went undercover as an entry-level guard at a private prison in Winnfield, Louisiana. Four months later, his employment came to an abrupt end. But he had seen enough, and in short order he wrote an expose about his experiences that won a National Magazine Award and became the most-read feature in the history of the magazine Mother Jones. Still, there was much more that needed to be said. Weaving together a deeper reckoning of Bauer's experiences with a thoroughly researched history of for-profit prisons--institutions which predate the Civil War--American Prison is a blistering indictment of a system unaccountable to public scrutiny and a powerful human document about the true face of justice in America.