On May 21, 1874, Congress approved the establishment of the United States Disciplinary Barracks (USDB), formerly the United States Military Prison at Fort Leavenworth. The original prison was once a quartermaster depot, supplying all military posts, camps, and stations in the Indian Territory to the West. It has been the "center of correctional excellence" in the military for over 130 years, housing the most notorious service members in the armed forces, including maximum-custody inmates and those with death sentences. On October 5, 2002, retreat was played for the last time in front of the eight-story castle inside the old USDB, and another era started with the occupation of a new modern correctional facility.
This pamphlet about the United States Disciplinary Barracks (USDB) at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, includes its history, a description of the prison facilities, administrative staff organization and functions, mission, and the role of the people employed there.
The fourteen contributors to this volume all have had experience in military prisons as psychologists, psychiatrists, penologists, educational advisors, or project officers for correction and for research. The importance of their subject can be realized by noting that when the nation is at war the military correctional and confinement system is larger than the entire federal prison system. Psychiatrists and psychologists, as well as students of criminology and penology, will find here much that is relevant to their professional work. But the question of the military prisoner will excite a broader interest. Every thoughtful person at some time confronts the problem of his responsibility for removing great numbers of men from normal civilian pursuits. Events during the last two years have created an urgent need to learn the facts of military imprisonment and the consequences of the widespread military service. This need is now met by publication of this book.
On July 1, 1895, under the direction of warden James French, the first federal prison was born. That same year, St. Louis architects Eames and Young went to work drawing up plans for an institution that would house the most notorious offenders in the nations history. At sunrise on March 1, 1897, 300 inmates and 30 guards marched three miles to the construction site located on the southwest corner of the military reservation. From sunup to sundown seven days a week in the hot Kansas summer to the harsh prairie winters, inmates labored building their new home. Leavenworths rich history as a gateway to the Old West is second to none. Name a famous figure such as George Armstrong Custer, John Joseph Pershing, Dwight D. Eisenhower, or Colin Powell. They have all graced the streets of this historic community. Equally pick a name of the most notorious criminals. George Machine Gun Kelly, Robert F. Stroud, Frank Nash, Frank the Enforcer Nitti, and George Buggs Moranthey all stopped by to spend time in Leavenworth.
An enraging, necessary look at the private prison system, and a convincing clarion call for prison reform.” —NPR.org New York Times Book Review 10 Best Books of 2018 * One of President Barack Obama’s favorite books of 2018 * Winner of the 2019 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize * Winner of the Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism * Winner of the 2019 RFK Book and Journalism Award * A New York Times Notable Book A ground-breaking and brave inside reckoning with the nexus of prison and profit in America: in one Louisiana prison and over the course of our country's history. In 2014, Shane Bauer was hired for $9 an hour to work as an entry-level prison guard at a private prison in Winnfield, Louisiana. An award-winning investigative journalist, he used his real name; there was no meaningful background check. Four months later, his employment came to an abrupt end. But he had seen enough, and in short order he wrote an exposé about his experiences that won a National Magazine Award and became the most-read feature in the history of the magazine Mother Jones. Still, there was much more that he needed to say. In American Prison, Bauer weaves a much deeper reckoning with his experiences together with a thoroughly researched history of for-profit prisons in America from their origins in the decades before the Civil War. For, as he soon realized, we can't understand the cruelty of our current system and its place in the larger story of mass incarceration without understanding where it came from. Private prisons became entrenched in the South as part of a systemic effort to keep the African-American labor force in place in the aftermath of slavery, and the echoes of these shameful origins are with us still. The private prison system is deliberately unaccountable to public scrutiny. Private prisons are not incentivized to tend to the health of their inmates, or to feed them well, or to attract and retain a highly-trained prison staff. Though Bauer befriends some of his colleagues and sympathizes with their plight, the chronic dysfunction of their lives only adds to the prison's sense of chaos. To his horror, Bauer finds himself becoming crueler and more aggressive the longer he works in the prison, and he is far from alone. A blistering indictment of the private prison system, and the powerful forces that drive it, American Prison is a necessary human document about the true face of justice in America.
