American Prison: A Reporter’s Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment

As Bauer tours Winn’s prison facility, he sees a series of company logos on the walls featuring eagles in various modes of flight and attack. The portrayal of a bald eagle as a bird of prey works on several levels. For one, it symbolizes the United States as both a beacon of freedom and capitalism—the eagle appears on the national seal and its currency. However, on a subtler level, it also serves as a warning. The eagles depicted on Winn’s walls are not idyllic icons of the natural world, soaring peacefully above the fruited plains; they are predators, ready to unleash an attack on unsuspecting prey. CCA functions on both of these levels as well. It is the epitome of capitalism, earning a profit at all costs, but it also preys on the narrow assumptions of the public—assumptions about the criminality of Black men, assumptions about the moral depravity of the incarcerated, and assumptions that convicts are somehow something else, a breed apart who deserve what they get rather than a group of people who have been abandoned by society and left to survive by any means necessary.