Some months ago on twitter, I came across Shane Bauer, whose amazing article “Solitary in Iran Nearly Broke Me. Then I Went Inside America’s Prisons,” I had read in Mother Jones Magazine. Like me, Shane did not intend to become a prison activist. It happened because of his experience inside prison. Unlike me he was a hostage and suffered as a prisoner. His work is always informed by insight and knowledge and he doesn’t pretend to know all.

So, when I saw a tweet by Shane that he was in “Tampa for the American Correctional Association’s annual convention–the big meet-up of prison industries, guards, and wardens,” I had a strange reaction. Why on earth go to a convention where everyone is making money off prisoners? I have been to these conventions, seen the products and talked to the practitioners. Even Alan Mills, a fellow follower and prison activist, told him to have fun in “the belly of the beast.” But Shane’s tweets assured us he would eventually us his insights for another piece. I asked him if I could share them, so here are some of his tweets from today, February 1st. They speak for themselves.

• “Learn prison Spanish! A guide at the American Correctional Association convention. pic.twitter.com/eREywvVmR1.”
• “CCA private prison warden in Tennessee says to me: ‘No one says, “I want to be a warden when I grow up.'”
• “A corrections consultant who worked in Afghanistan says to me, ‘Afghans are easy to lock up. A lot easier than Americans.'”
• “Sitting in a workshop at the American Correctional Assoc. Convention on how to save money on prisons–telemedicine!”
• “If your doing mental health, you don’t need anything more sophisticated than a camera and a screen,” says x-warden re telehealth in prison.”
• He also tweets that “ER and Trauma visits” are a “new frontier,” — over a TV.
• “Nurse giving class on seizures…says threatening to take someone’s temp anally (then doing it) is a way to tell if they are faking it.”
• “Sitting in a workshop “Avoid Falling in Love With an Inmate,”… (The teacher is a man).”

• My favorite tweet: “‘Stand if you’ve worked in a jail or prison.’ About 50 stood. ‘Sit if you’ve never heard of staff having sec with an inmate.’ No one sat.”
• Some prisons have had staffing problems, so they reduced the age limit for guards from 21 to 18. In Tennessee the limit is 18 statewide.
• “How do you know if an inmate is trying to manipulate you? They try to make friends with you. Once you go down to their level, you’re toast.”
• CCA private prison warden to colleague: “You know what you need to do? You need to start a nursing home company for geriatric inmates.”
• Next workshop at the American Correctional Association convention: suicide resistant cell design. (Taught by a former ER cast member.)
• A company that designs suicide proof vent grills offered a Harley to anyone who could hang himself successfully. Many tried. None succeeded.
• “‘Loss of life has a very demoralizing effect on staff and the threat of liability is significant.’ That’s the most emotion we’ve got so far.”
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Thanks Shane–I look forward to whatever you write from this. I have written about some of these issues on Boston Magazine, (suicide smocks as a disastrous fix, for example) but it is profound to hear them in 140 words or less, so shockingly straight up. The business of Corrections was written about well by Marc Mauer and Meda Chesney-Lind in their report at The Sentencing Project in 2002, and CNBC featured an expose on the billions made on Corrections which is available online

The beat goes on as long as under 2% goes to programming and 98% goes to Corrections, as in my state of Massachusetts..