Prison, Inc.: A Convict Exposes Life Inside a Private Prison (Alternative Criminology)

268 Pages·2005·1.82 MB·English

by  K.C. Carceral

Prison, Inc.
Alternative Criminology Series
General Editor: Jeff Ferrell
Pissing on Demand
Workplace Drug Testing and the Rise of the Detox Industry
Ken Tunnell
Empire of Scrounge
Inside the Urban Underground of Dumpster Diving,
Trash Picking, and Street Scavenging
Jeff Ferrell
Prison, Inc.
A Convict Exposes Life inside a Private Prison
K. C. Carceral, edited by Thomas J. Bernard
Prison, Inc.
A Convict Exposes Life
inside a Private Prison
K. C. Carceral
edited by
Thomas J. Bernard
a
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York and London
new york university press
New York and London
www.nyupress.org
© 2006 by New York University
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Carceral, K. C.
Prison, inc. : a convict exposes life inside a private prison /
by K.C. Carceral ; edited by Thomas J. Bernard.
p. cm. — (Alternative criminology series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978–0–8147–9954–3 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN–10: 0–8147–9954–X (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN–13: 978–0–8147–9955–0 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN–10: 0–8147–9955–8 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Prisons—United States—Case studies.
2. Corrections-Contracting out—United States—Case studies.
3. Prisoners-United States—Biography. 4. Carceral, K. C.
I. Bernard, Thomas J. II. Title. III. Series.
HV9471.C283 2005
365’.973—dc22 2005017515
New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper,
and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability.
Manufactured in the United States of America
c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
p 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
I have always held tremendous guilt about my
crime. No matter the incident, I can never forget I
murdered another human being. How self-cen-
tered and heinous I was. Seeing the pain in my
family’s eyes is exceptionally small compared to
what my victim’s family has suffered.
The world is a lesser place without him.
My serious regrets toward my actions will never
change what I have done. I can only change myself
so it does not occur again.
To my family and those I hurt, I am truly and
deeply sorry for the pain I caused.
—K. C. Carceral

Contents
Foreword ix
Thomas J. Bernard
Acknowledgments xvii
part i Welcome to Enterprise
1 The Politics of Enterprise Prison 3
2 Orientation 10
3 New Prison Problems 21
part ii Guerrilla Warfare
4 Wild Wild West 35
5 Beat Down Crew 49
6 The Zoo 61
part iii My Tour
7 Caught Up 79
8 The Other Enemy 88
9 Gang Related 105
10 Seg Time 114
vii
viii | Contents
part iv An Exercise in Futility
11 Riot 135
12 Lockdown 148
13 Aftermath 161
part v Taking Control
14 The Masters 173
15 The Servants 190
16 The Power 204
part vi Analysis
17 Factors Contributing to Violence and Its Control 215
Notes 237
Glossary 241
About the Author and the Editor 247
Foreword
Thomas J. Bernard
This book is a case study of a privately owned prison intended
to provide you, the reader, with an accurate glimpse into prison life. It fol-
lows the events that occurred with the prison’s descent into chaos and its
subsequent climb back toward order and control. All names of people
and places in this book have been changed to protect the identity of the
author, who fears he might suffer retaliation either from prison officials
or from other inmates if his true identity were disclosed.
To disguise his identity, the author of this book uses the pseudonym
K. C. Carceral. This person is an inmate who has been in prison since
1982 when, shortly after graduating from high school, he was convicted
of first-degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. In 1997, after
eighteen years in various state prisons,1 Carceral was transferred to a
brand-new “private” prison that is owned and operated by a profit-mak-
ing corporation whose stock is publicly traded on Wall Street. This is a
real prison run by a real corporation, but to disguise their identities in this
book they are called Enterprise Correctional Facility and Venture Cor-
rectional Corporation. Venture maintained that it could house inmates at
lower cost while providing better facilities and services than prisons run
by the state’s Department of Corrections. In order to achieve these tax
savings, the state government contracted with this corporation to house
a significant portion of its inmate population.
Carceral comes from a state in the northern part of the United States
(called Northern State in this book), while Venture built its new prison in
a southern state (called Southern State here) about 600 miles away.
Shortly after it opened, 1,500 inmates from Northern State were trans-
ferred to this brand-new prison. Almost immediately, the prison began to
descend into chaos and violence as the corporation focused on contain-
ix