In December 2014, Mother Jones senior reporter Shane Bauer started a job as a corrections officer at a Louisiana prison run by the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the country’s second-largest private prison company. During his four months on the job, Bauer would witness stabbings, an escape, lockdowns, and an intervention by the state Department of Corrections as the company struggled to maintain control. Read Bauer’s gripping firsthand account here.
Bauer’s investigation is also the subject of a six-part video series produced by Mother Jones senior digital editor James West. In the third episode, a prisoner who lost his legs and fingers to gangrene talks about the lack of medical care in the prison. Bauer talks about the segregation unit and wrestles with the conditions of prisoners on suicide watch.
