Mother Jones reporter Shane Bauer beat out WaPo‘s hot shot David Fahrenthold for The Atlantic‘s 2017 Michael Kelly award.
Bauer worked behind bars for four months and wrote up his account of the emotional and physical abuse inside a Louisiana prison. He received $25,000 for first place in a Washington ceremony Sunday night.
“Shane Bauer provided a public service by giving readers an unvarnished look inside a corporate-run prison. Michael Kelly would have greatly admired his determination and courage in reporting this important story,” the judges said in a release.
Unfortunately the release screws up the time frame. It links to a story with “My four years as a private prison guard, but when you click it, the story reads “My four months as a private prison guard.”
The first chapter has a really catchy headline: Chapter I: “Inmates Run This Bitch.”
After he’s asked when he can start, he writes, “I take a breath. Am I really going to become a prison guard? Now that it might actually happen, it feels scary and a bit extreme.”
He explained how easy it was to land the job at Winn Correctional Center in Winnfield, La.
“They weren’t interested in the details of my résumé,” he wrote. “They didn’t ask about my job history, my current employment with the Foundation for National Progress, the publisher of Mother Jones, or why someone who writes about criminal justice in California would want to move across the country to work in a prison. They didn’t even ask about the time I was arrested for shoplifting when I was 19.”
There were rules such as no sex with the inmates. He was given a hotline to call if he felt suicidal and three free counseling sessions.
He used a pen as a recording deice. During training, he willingly got tear gassed.
“I try desperately to breathe, but I can only choke,” he wrote. “…I double over. I want to throw up. I hear a woman crying. My upper lip is thick with snot. When our breath starts coming back, the two women linked to me hug each other. I want to hug them too. The three of us laugh a little as tears keep pouring down our cheeks.”
To be sure, lots of weird stuff happens during his journey. A prisoner invites him into his cell, asking for his “booty.” At another point, he asks a prisoner to stop masturbating. When Bauer threatens to write him up, he tells him if he does, he’ll just keep doing it all night long.
“I’m just doing my thing. …Write that bitch,” the inmate said. “I don’t give a fuck. I’m on extended lockdown.”
The Michale Kelly award is given annually to the journalist who exemplifies Kelly’s tenacity while covering the Iraq war in 2003.
Fahrenthold was named among the finalists. He wrote about President Trump‘s shady charitable contributions during the 2016 campaign.
The judges included: Susan Davis, a congressional reporter with NPR; Charles Green, former editor of National Journal; Susan Mercandetti, editor-at-large at Random House; Cullen Murphy, editor-at-large of Vanity Fair; and Michael Phillips, a staff reporter with The Wall Street Journal and past finalist for the Michael Kelly Award.