- [Jessica] Shane Bauer is a journalist,
who was held in a prison in Iran for two years.
Later that experience would lead him
to decide to go undercover as a guard
in a Louisiana for-profit prison.
I met him out for ramen, a dish that represents
the commodification of food and power in prison,
this is his story from both sides of the bars.
- I spent two years in prison in Iran,
two friends and me went on a little trip,
we went to Northern Iraq, Iraqi Kurdistand,
which at the time was considered safe,
there was a small tourist industry
and we came near the Iranian border unknowingly
and were detained.
- You spent months in a prison in Louisiana
- Yeah. - undercover
as a prison guard, - Yeah.
This prison is crazy,
beyond anything I ever imagined.
- It seemed really hard, especially after everything
that you went through as a prisoner,
how did this all happen?
- I just filled out the application on the website
of Corrections Corporation of America.
- How did they not realize you were a reporter though,
this is what baffles me. - Yeah, right,
I mean, I filled out the application truthfully,
I used my personal information, my real name,
I put my current employer on the, you know, application,
a couple of weeks later, I was getting phone calls.
- Why did you decide to do it that way?
Right, like lots of people write articles about prisons,
without taking months off of their life.
- I guess, you know, prisons are an issue
that are pretty close to me,
that I think it's one of the more important issues
in America right now and in recent decades,
I think that when we look back, you know,
100 years from now, I think mass incarceration
is gonna be one of the defining issues of this era,
we have more than two million people behind bars
and in the 1980s, when the prison population
really started to skyrocket,
the states couldn't build prisons fast enough,
so these companies stepped in,
the Corrections Corporation of America was created
and it said, "Look, we can build prisons for you,
"we can do this cheaper than you can and we'll make money,"
the way that money has been made from prisoners
has changed over time, through most of our history,
there has been an attempt to profit from prisoners.
When I was in prison in Iran,
they would bring food to our cells,
at one point in the day, they would take us out
to this kind of open air cell
for a little while, so like outdoor time,
- Right.
- When we'd come back, sometimes there would be
the food carts and they would have some extra meals
and we would often take an extra tray
and most of the guards would allow it,
'cause it was just left over food,
but one day there was a guard
that got really angry about that,
this guard came into my cell and almost beat me,
it was, you know, it was a really, intense, scary moment,
it was all about this food tray,
that was gonna probably go in the garbage
and then when I was a prison guard in Louisiana
at the private prison,
the prison was on lockdown at one point,
which means that prisoners
were not allowed to leave their dorms,
so we'd go into these dorms with a cart
and give each person's on their bed,
we gave them each one thing
and one prisoner took an extra tray, took two trays
and I saw him do it and I, you know,
went up to him, I was yelling at him
and saying like, you know, give that tray back
and I was just kind of standing over him
and yeah, there's a moment, where I kind of,
it hit me, like, here I am, like on the other side
worrying about some guy having extra food,
you know, (laughs) as if that affects me or anybody else.
- [Jessica] At all, right, right, right.
- Yeah, you know, I spent so much time
in prison dreaming about food,
there would be times where we would get a new thing,
like I remember we got cabbage,
I would just sit with that thing and close my eyes
and eat it and it's like you get all of it,
you get like, I never thought,
realized cabbage was spicy before, you know.
- Right.
- You know, you really appreciate it,
the range of food that we have,
you know, out here and food's a big thing in prison,
I mean like anywhere else, if you have nothing,
you have to eat the cafeteria food,
if you have some means, you go to the canteen, you know,
buy some honeybuns or ramen, you know,
ramen packets is a really big thing in prison, yeah,
and then you have people,
who kind of become like chefs in the prison,
where they, not are actually working in the cafeteria,
but in the dorms, people will pay them often
with ramen packets, that's a currency in prison,
- [Jessica] Ramen packets are?
- Yeah, they call them soups, - Okay.
- So you know, somebody might be in a dorm of 44 guys,
this might be the kind of chef,
maybe he has kind of a connect, that works in the cafeteria,
that will kick hm some fresh onions or vegetables,
he'll take the ramen packets that people buy in the canteen
and you know, spice it up a little bit,
corn chips are something, becomes spice,
maybe somebody will take the meat from their meal
in the cafeteria and use that in the ramen,
you take some pork rinds,
soak it in Kool-Aid to make it a little sweet
and then, you know, put it in the soup,
Slim Jims, that stuff, you know, it's also a currency,
because a ramen packet has defined value,
you could tell if somebody was really well off in prison,
depending on how many ramen packets
they had in their locker,
I remember one guy got put in solitary confinement,
I had to clean out his locker
and it was full of ramen packets
and he had a huge bag of ramen, that was, it was clear to me
that he had a lot of power in the prison,
I heard of a guy, who got stabbed for ramen packets,
I mean, it's the thing that the prison
kind of revolves around in a certain way.
- Right. - It's often an issue,
that comes up in prisons,
when you have like riots or big protests,
the grievances are often about medical care and food.
So I spent two years in prison,
first four months in solitary confinement
and then the rest of the time,
I was in a cell with my friends.
We went on hunger strike to be able to see each other,
when we were in solitary confinement.
Eventually we were able to see each other
for half hour or an hour a day,
it's very easy to become institutionalized in prison,
you know, your whole life is regimented,
you don't have choices.
- Right and what was eating like there?
- It was better than the food in the prison
- Really? - that I worked at
in Louisiana for sure, yeah.
I was working at a unit with 350 prisoners,
it was just me and one other guard.
It was nerve wracking, you know, I don't have any, you know,
night stick or pepper spray or anything like that,
- It's just you? - Yeah,
I just had a radio.
You know, not many people wanna work
for nine dollars an hour in a prison.
- Did different prisoners get different kinds of food,
like depending on where they were,
like if they were in solitary or if they were like,
had mental health problems?
- Yeah, at this prison, in particular,
if somebody went on suicide watch,
they would get different meals,
it was like, you know, a baloney sandwich,
peanut butter and jelly sandwich
and some maybe apple slices, you know,
I tallied up all the components of the meal,
I found that the core value of that meal
was below US FDA standards for just adult men.
The mental health director actually told us
that they want to get people out of suicide watch,
because in suicide watch,
a prisoner is guarded by one guard,
- Right. - in the regular prison,
one guard guards 170 people, so it costs money,
so they try to make it as uncomfortable as possible.
- So they're trying to like incentivize getting out
by making the food
- Yeah, yeah. - worse,
so they wanna get out as well?
- Yeah.
- That sort of blew my mind a little bit.
- It felt like they were all in some way
kind of exploited by this for-profit system.