My answer is true.
Reading is meaningful only if the content in the text is true. No matter how beautiful a lie is, it is just a castle in the air.
In order to be true, the author sometimes has to pay value. For some people who have pursuits and beliefs, they feel that everything they have paid for the truth is worthwhile. For example, Sean Bauer, in order to expose the dark inside story of private prisons in the United States, did not hesitate to serve as a prison guard as an undercover, went deep into the prison, showed intimate concern for prisoners' lives, and proved the dark and decadent inside story of private prisons with facts.
American Prison is a shocking masterpiece brought to readers by Sean Bauer. In addition to introducing his four-month undercover experience in prison, he also read a lot of historical documents and elaborated on the formation, development and significance of private prisons in the United States. This book was rated as the top ten best books in the United States in 20 18 by many mainstream media such as The New York Times and San Francisco chronicle. Recently, the book was translated by Guo Hong, a national first-class translator, published by Jinghua Times Chinese Bookstore, and presented to readers in China.
Taking time as the axis, the book interweaves two clues: the undercover narrative experience and the development history of American private prisons. Let readers indulge in wonderful adventure stories like reading storybooks, and look at the history of American private prisons from the commanding heights like reading history books.
I draw two lines and introduce this book to you with my understanding:
Sean Bauer's undercover career;
Bauer spent a painful time in prison after being arrested as a reporter in Israel. After the release, the idea of secret private prisons in the United States came into being. Personal experience made him feel that prisoners are human beings and should get their due rights. The application process is not complicated, and few people take the initiative to be prison guards (the hourly salary is only $9, and they are temporary workers).
After a short informal training, Bauer took up his post. According to the danger of prisoners, the prison is divided into several districts. The most dangerous and stabbed prisoners are kept in the worst conditions. These people live in a small space and have a bad environment. And most prisoners need to work. Labor is the main theme of private prisons, which requires prisoners to do a lot of heavy, simple and boring work.
As time went on, Bauer slowly went deep into the core area and gray area of the prison. Drugs, sex trade, collecting money, fighting, prisoners who are ill and can't get medical care, prison break, murder ... These contents are not the author's imagination, but the real world recorded by personal experience. It can be said that this is the core content of this book, so I won't expand it one by one here. Interested readers should read books.
An overview of the development of American private prisons;
American private prisons began in the 1980s, and their initial formation can be traced back to the British colonial period. 17 18 or so, Britain transported a large number of prisoners to the United States for detention, but did not want to pay too much. The contractor had to sell them to American farmers for a profit. The mode of profiting from prisoners' labor has laid a foundation for the future development of private prisons in the United States.
After the two world wars, with the intensification of conflicts between war, smuggling and racism, the number of prisoners in public prisons in the United States increased greatly, and financial expenditures began to make ends meet. In this environment, private prisons came into being. At first, private prison operators got the right to operate free of charge, but later they had to pay a large fee to the government. It can be seen that this industry is very profitable, but its essence is to exploit and squeeze prisoners as cheap labor. Compared with serfs in the past, the maintenance cost of prisoners' labor force is lower, because you don't have to care too much about their lives.
Although this model solves the problem of financial funds, private prisons with the purpose of making money are divorced from the original intention of reforming and educating prisoners. In private prisons, patients are not treated, and rich prisoners are still bosses, who squeeze the salaries of staff. These phenomena abound. Making money has become the ultimate goal of running a prison.
The problems reflected by American prisons will also exist in prisons in third world countries. Through such a book that goes deep into the core of its system, a lot of thinking can be triggered. The topic of prison is a closed topic in all countries, and only when there is a major event (such as prison break and a large number of people dying of illness) will it attract public attention.
How many violent incidents and extremism in society are caused by the unfairness and injustice of the prison system? And the greatest value that American prisons bring us is that it causes us to think deeply about this system!