Shadowing Practice: The Town Surrounded by Prisons | Inside America's Prison Capital | Free Documentary - Learn English Speaking with Video
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I've heard several people who said that when they're coming down from the mountains,
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coming into this area, you could sense a heaviness of the darkness, like a dark cloud.
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And I wouldn't be surprised if it's not from the prison system.
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The prison system has always been part of the culture in Canyon City.
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We have 13 prisons in that county.
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And so the city basically grew up around the prison there.
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It's important to know that when a recession hits,
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like we have seen hit America and Colorado and in Fremont County,
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that when you have an industry like prisons, those jobs are not going to be involved in layoffs.
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You're not going to be turning loose inmates during a recession.
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If the prison was not here, there would be nothing and nobody because they have nothing else to offer.
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The nickname for this area is Prison Valley.
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We're in some godforsaken place in the middle of Colorado, Canyon City.
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We've been fantasizing about this town for a long time now.
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In fact, ever since we read that sentence in some newspaper, Canyon City is the clean version of hell.
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A county of 36 ,000 souls, 13 prisons and a century of stripes.
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Almost a blueprint for what the future might look like.
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State of the art prisons, 16 % of the population behind bars, and an entire economy where even
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Even those on the outside are inside.
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The first person we met was the manager of the Riviera Motel in Fremont County, two blocks from Canyon City, not far from Florence, Colorado.
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Everything about this place appealed to us.
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Its rundown feel, the garish orange, old -time America.
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There were problems that day at the Riviera.
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The Wi -Fi wasn't working.
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The air conditioning had gone crazy.
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The vacancy sign was flashing and some laundry was missing.
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And Halina was already playing cat and mouse with us.
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My name is Halina Dabrowska, Polish.
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Dabrowsky, American style and my husband and me came to Florence in 1988 and we bought a small motel,
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Riviera Motel, and we are still here.
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Riviera Motel, how can I help you?
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Hello?
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Then, Halina got out some wine, homemade, from grapes and apples.
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Polish no doubt about it.
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The Riviera's calling card said, Hospitality is our business.
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That sounded like the slogan for the whole county.
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She told us that we should stick around until the prisoners' families turned up that weekend, right here at the motel.
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Brenda was one of them.
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Little did we know that she'd have such an impact on our trip.
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We followed Helena's advice, we put down our bags.
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Everyone in Canyon City tells the same story.
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Not totally accurate, but not exactly wrong either.
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They said the town had had a choice in the 19th century.
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become Colorado's university capital or its finest prison city.
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That's how the legend goes, and that's what makes people tick around here.
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But to understand what it's really like here...
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You have to get out of town, then come back later.
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Put in the miles, head north.
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Go to Denver, the real capital of Colorado, and meet with people like Christy Donner, a penal reform activist.
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Her headquarters is a social center in the heart of the city.
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There is a reason why our prisons are so far away, out of sight, out of mind.
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I mean, it harkens back to this notion of banishment, right, in other times, where you banish people for bad acts,
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and they are removed from society.
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It harkens back to slavery in this country.
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I mean, we have a long legacy around making profit off of people in chains.
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We like control.
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We like force.
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And that's the perfect recipe for a criminal justice system that is dominated by incarceration to this extent.
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In America, a lot of times what we'll do is try
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and solve a problem with the biggest stick we can find, right?
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And that big stick in the criminal justice world is prisons.
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So that's the biggest threat that we can impose on people, right, is to lock them up, lock them away from their families,
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take away their freedom, take away their choice, bury them in far -off, remote, rural communities, far away from their families.
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And so that's what we've done here over the last 20 years.
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You know, there's a U .S.
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Department of Justice report
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that said an African -American male born in 2001 has the
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odds of—one in three odds of going to prison in the United States at some point in their lifetime.
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One in six for Latinos.
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I mean, that's mass incarceration.
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And when it's literally in the African -American and Latino community,
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every family is impacted somebody who is a member of that family has been in prison or is in prison or jail.
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That's astounding.
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That's astounding.
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The war on drugs.
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More severe sentences, they've doubled in 20 years.
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A clampdown on probation, that's what's behind these figures.
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Donner runs through them, each one sounding like yet another defeat.
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You can't really tell which is going to win out, her weariness or her energy.
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A few blocks away, still in Denver, is a small house.
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It belongs to Erin Rosa, a tiny slip of a woman.
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Twenty -one years old, she moves quickly with determination.
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Erin is a journalist.
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More than that, actually.
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Old school.
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Kind of a loner.
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Erin is one of the only reporters in Colorado tracking down the flaws in the prison industry.
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The biggest issue facing the United States prison system is the sheer amount of people we are locking up right now.
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The United States incarcerates one out of a hundred of its citizens.
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And that's more percentage -wise than even China incarcerates.
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Fremont County has the largest prison population in the state, but also one of the largest in the country as far as per population and county.
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It's unique in that it is one of the only counties to have so many prisons,
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and it's the only place where there is a federal supermax, and it's also one of the highest population of prison inmates in the United States.
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Working out of her office slash sitting room slash dining room slash bedroom, Erne is a believer in Obama, in the changing face of America.
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But she tells us not to get our hopes up too much.
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Because if there's one law in Canyon City, it's the law of silence.
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When I first was writing the stories, I went down there and I stayed a week.
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And I made some initial contacts, but you also have to have the time to be there
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and to get the workers there to trust you
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so they will talk to you and letting them know that you're not going to give their name.
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And that's the only way to get in, is to use sources on an anonymous basis.
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Your regular correctional officer, the person who's interacting face -to -face with inmates who are locked up at that facility,
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they're not allowed to speak to reporters, and if they do, they will lose their job.
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We left Erin to her work and hit the road back to Fremont County,
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determined to leave no stone unturned. As we drove past
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Colorado Springs, Some music caught our ear.
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Like every year, a crowd was paying tribute to the prison guards who died on the job.
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The traffic down below on Highway 25 drowns out the ceremony.
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Now we head back to town.
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Our destination?
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Supermax.
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The prison of prisons, half underground.
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The Colorado Sun had finally decided to join in.
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Welcome to Neighborhood Notes.
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The Florence Chamber Board of Directors invites you to their open house parties September 25th from 5 to 7 p .m.
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And thanks to the federal prison inmates, for the renovations.
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On the way to Supermax on the edge of town is this motel.
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Super 8 has a story to tell.
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It used to be called River Valley.
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It was put up in 1992 to house workers building the federal high -security mega -prison a mile away.
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Back then, the locals pitched in to buy land and donated it to the Federal Bureau of Prisons in Washington.
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The whole town was rooting for this federal prison somewhere between a desert and hell, clean as a whistle.
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The administrative maximum is all built on sensory deprivation.
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The prison basically is a triangle -shaped prison, two stories, upper -lower.
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We have a bottom corridor that the inmates, all inmate movement is conducted in as well as general staff movement.
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Anything that is basically there to keep the inmates from gaining access to the outside.
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So even when the inmates are on an outside rec yard, they see nothing but straight up.
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The walls, 20 -foot walls, so that all they can do is look up, they see sky, but they get no familiar surroundings around the prison.
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That way they have no landmarks.
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They really can't tell which way is north, which way is south.
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and just to prevent them to make some type of escape plan.
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We met Alan Rexford for the first time in one of the only decent restaurants in town.
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Alan brought along some union friends
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and some books about the end of the American dream and a portfolio on the prisons of Canyon City.
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The pizza wasn't so good, but he was perfect.
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At first, we didn't notice what he had under his shirt.
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We didn't care.
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We just listened.
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The only access they have to the outside is they have the window that's approximately
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four inches wide by about four foot tall.
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They can see the sky, they get light in, which is an ACA, Standard American Correction Association standard.
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They have to have so much natural light.
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Almost every cell is exactly the same.
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Inside it has a stainless steel shower.
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It has a concrete bunk in it.
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It has a concrete desk with a concrete stool and a concrete shelf to set the TV on.
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And then inside that cell there is a, what we call a sally port.
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There's a functional set of grills and then a solid outside door.
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So typically we can open the outside door, deal with the inmate at that point through the bars, and then re -secure it.
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Supermax.
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Home to the most dangerous prisoners in America.
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Locked up in their cells 23 hours a day.
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Allen talked and talked.
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It's not every day the president of the correction officers' union speaks freely, or almost.
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We made a pact, no reference to the security system.
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Allen spoke about everything else proudly, probably a question of survival.
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We take more the pride that we are the flagship, if I can call it that, the flagship of the Bureau.
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The administrative maximum is the prison, and the nickname for it is, of course, is the Alcatraz of the Rockies.
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So I don't think that we're really excited about having and these prisoners in there, I mean, to us, they're inmates.
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One inmate, whether they're famous or not, is another inmate.
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The public, on the other hand,
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they like that recognition of the Moussaouis and the Kaczynskys and the Nichols and McVeys and all this stuff in there.
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Of all the county's prisons, this is the most remote.
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Whenever we get too close, there's always a black and white car blocking the way, or else some particularly vigilant farmer in his pickup.
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As we walk along, snakes hiss above our heads, and little cacti stab us through our shoes.
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All of them guards for the United States Department of Justice.
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We'd been warned.
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Sorry, but for you, the gates are closed.
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The End
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The next morning we woke up at the Riviera.
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We couldn't believe our eyes.
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A leaflet suggested we serve time in a museum.
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The Museum of Prisons.
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Within the walls of a former woman's penitentiary.
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Complete with birds, gas chamber, and picnic tables.
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Death whets your appetite, apparently.
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The only one of its kind worldwide.
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At regular intervals, we hear announcements over loudspeakers.
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It's coming from above us.
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And it's for real.
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It's coming from next door, from another prison.
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But that one's active.
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We got out of there.
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There's also a weird spectacle in Canyon City.
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Lots of ageless, helmetless bikers.
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Pensioners wandering around.
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Or correction officers leaving for work.
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That's how it is here.
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As soon as you talk to someone, that someone knows someone who works in a prison.
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It's as automatic as a rifle.
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Except for them, the town's rock band, the Flumps.
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Nobody knows what their name's supposed to mean, not even them.
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We promise to come back soon and see them play.
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But right now, we've got an appointment just next door.
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Ritz Smitley greeted us in the shop next door.
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By day, Rick keeps an eye on the electronic systems at the federal prisons.
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Metal detectors, telephones, radios, cameras, that's his department.
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The rest of the time, Rick runs dress code with his wife, Shelly.
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Short -sleeved shirts, polo shirts, badges, insignia, pants, any kind of embroidery, that's their business.
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When we first started this business, because Rick works into the federal prison and he just has friendships and relationships within there,
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we had an initial clientele that came to just purchase and see what the store was like out of curiosity.
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Once they started purchasing uniforms, I don't know, small towns were friendly.
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We started building relationships with the personnel.
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They can buy their uniforms from any one of three vendors in the United States, four vendors in the United States.
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We're one of the four.
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Therefore, we don't just do uniforms for Florence, we ship all over the country.
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It sounded like the legend of the Wild West.
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It wasn't the gold diggers who made a fortune, it was the people selling pickaxes.
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Even though we could see that this was a cottage industry rather than the real prison industry, something told us we were getting warm.
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Okay, did she say where she was going to go or anything to that effect?
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28, 29, Highway 60, right here
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Long Pine, Colorado 195, Mary.
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The entire perimeter of the State Department of Corrections plows around next to the fence
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and keeps it freshly plowed so that if an inmate leaves and escapes,
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they have to across it to get outside and like in so they will know which way the inmate went James biker
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Republican serving his second term as sheriff looks like he's straight out of central casting at a crossroads
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we ask him if his real name's James or Jim
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because that's what everybody calls him around here James smiles call me Jim
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he says makes me sound more like a sheriff don't you think and there's Jim picking his way through the hills around
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Canyon City across the area set aside for prisoners who've died without relatives.
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Somebody's written a song about it on YouTube.
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It says there aren't only orphans under our feet.
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Some of these guys went to the gas chamber, some of them were innocent.
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When the train whistle blows and the air smells like rain, I'll rest here in peace.
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Nobody dances The woodpecker waltz
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The song's called Woodpecker Waltz after the final walk down death row.
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We didn't ask Jim James for anything.
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He was just taking his time, moving from one grave to the next.
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We thought it was an act, but soon realized it wasn't.
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Jim's like that, keen to show us every nook and cranny, tell us about his town, win us over.
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Upon an innocent heart.
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Venice Ford turned off the main road.
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Jim Biker wanted to show us this, an empty prison.
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This is the women's facility that's no longer open, but this is it.
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That's where it was.
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It's not as protected.
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We can drive up to the front gate and you can see some of it.
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It is decommissioned now.
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I went to a ceremony here a week or so ago that officially decommissioned it.
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A woman guard appeared out of nowhere.
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She told us to clear out.
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Jim said we'd better do as she said.
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We would soon see her again.
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You see a lot of this block on these homes.
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This is native to our county, and inmates did chisel that out.
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They cut that by hand.
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I would be willing to bet every building
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that you see in Canyon City downtown and in our county that has that kind of block, an inmate, at some point, cut that block.
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And so it went for five hours.
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Then Jim took one last turn off.
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We're going down.
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It's called Skyline Drive.
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You haven't been over it yet, have you?
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This was all built by inmate labor.
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Thank you.
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Make sure you got the right tube.
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In his patrol car, Jim talked to us about his jail like it was his baby, like it was a motorcycle or a house.
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There was something surreal about his affection for prison bars.
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Jim told us again, in a prison, the food's the key.
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If you serve bad food, you create frustration, and that causes trouble.
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And so Jim sits down in the middle of the canteen, and Jim smiles at all these people he and his men have locked up.
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The sheriff's jail is a kind of antechamber to the county's prisons.
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Drunk drivers or murderers.
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Joint smokers or bank robbers.
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Most of them pass through here.
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145 men and 18 women.
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All restrained, without distinction.
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For security reasons, a guard whispers to us.
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Smells everywhere.
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The place reeks of damp and foul air breathed many times over.
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Colors everywhere clues to people's past.
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The green uniforms are for the irredeemable, serious criminals.
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Red is for lesser crimes.
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Stripes for minor offenses.
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Then, on the far side of the next door, our next shock.
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Sixteen beds and eighteen women.
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Two mattresses on the floor.
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Here we go again.
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Jim stands facing the women, chatting, joking, rounds things off with a shouldn't have come to jail girls, and they laugh heartily.
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When it's over, Jim says goodbye and confesses, I don't like to see all these folks in jail.
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That's how America became what it is.
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It's a cultural problem.
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We thank him and take to the road again, not realizing we haven't seen anything yet.
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On the far side of town, another prison, the oldest of all, traditional showcase of the Colorado Department of Corrections industrial prowess.
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License plates are a local specialty, a symbol of the region's prosperity.
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The state pays the best wages to prisoners in this workshop, $50 a month plus bonuses.
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Inmates work in the stamping mill making state license plates and road signs.
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In the West, when they say something, they're not fools.
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Buffy McFadden is a Democrat senator, a rarity in an ultra -conservative area like this.
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Buffy is pretty unusual all around.
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She greets us by bumping fists, couldn't care less about stale conventions.
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She's an endless stream of talk.
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The license plate plant, those are Colorado license tags for Colorado vehicles.
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They're all made here in Fremont County at the territorial prison.
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Off in the distance, every car looks as if it's carrying around a little piece of prison.
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License plates are a sort of prison takeaway here.
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Past, present, the official line remains the same.
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Modern penology recognizes man's need of work and furnishes tools and machinery.
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Because if they're not doing anything, they literally get into more trouble and cause more harm, the inmates.
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But also our goal should be to teach an inmate a trade when they come out.
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We have some of the lowest paid inmates in the country.
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I'll never win an election wanting to pay inmates more money.
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We should not make an industry of inmates.
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It should not be.
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And I call it the manufacturing mentality.
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In the United States, we've outsourced much of our manufacturing, whether it's autos, whether it's clothing, shoes, appliances, anything we purchase,
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much of it comes from outside of the United States now.
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So what are we left with in the United States?
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And it seems like we've gone to what I call, we manufacture inmates through failure factories.
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We felt like we'd just come out of the prison visiting room, drained.
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We had to drive to another appointment with Brenda, the inmate's wife that Halina, the manager of the Riviera Motel,
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had told us about when we first arrived.
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Her words came back to us.
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She's really nice, so I like her.
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I am going to be 28, and my husband is 30.
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He'll be 32 tomorrow.
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The hardest part's been for my daughter.
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She was three when he hadn't turned himself in.
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You guys are going to make me cry.
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Everyone says their husband or their loved one's innocent.
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In our case, they never proved anything.
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It was a white collar crime and they sent him away for ten and a half years, we're ten and a half hours from home.
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He's never been in trouble ever before this.
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I mean, he didn't kill anybody.
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I think it's the prison system in America.
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The only thing I buy here when I come is gas and I pay a hotel.
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I refuse to buy food from here.
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I don't go out to eat at any of these restaurants.
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People here, it's mean to say, but a little on the trashier side.
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They don't, they get all this money, but they don't take care of stuff.
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Their houses are run down.
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If the prison was not here, there would be nothing and nobody, because they have nothing else to offer.
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The nickname for this area is Prison Valley.
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Brenda's daughter was playing with the daughter of another inmate's wife in the car park.
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Then Brenda got to her feet.
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You guys got a few minutes, she asked.
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And now, we're heading towards the jail where her husband is held, out there in the hills,
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in the heart of the federal prison complex. And my girlfriend, Sandy.
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Her father's here.
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We did not know each other before this experience.
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We're from the same town.
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I mean, we live within 15 minutes of each other and most of the time it's single moms visiting their husbands.
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You find other ways to make it a cheaper drive, cheaper flight.
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You have the ADX, the federal camp and all that on one ground.
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It's the FCI, Florence.
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He's in the camp.
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There's two or three other that are on the campus.
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I feel nothing when I get there.
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I've been doing it for two years.
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The first time, I called his mom, and I didn't want to go in.
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But you get over it.
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It's not as bad as what you think.
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You get in and you're like, okay, I can breathe.
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They're okay.
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Anyway, coming is not the hard part.
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Leaving would be the hard part.
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Early morning and we had to get it off our chests.
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Understand how a whole town can put up with a system like this, surrounded by all these prisons.
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Outstanding, one nil and with the reload.
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Out!
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Remains five buckshot.
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Two and one.
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Out!
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The council's longest -serving employee was waiting for us at the Florence Town Hall.
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This was what we'd come for.
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To understand how things worked to listen to everyone, to judge no one.
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In late 89 and 90, when the Federal Bureau of Prisons was coming here to look for a site, the...
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The people in the area were very concerned about having another prison.
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It's a clean industry and it wasn't that we didn't want a prison, but it would also, you know, ensure jobs.
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One of the concerns that some of our council people had at the time was inmate families.
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And the concern was that inmate families could bring in drugs,
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alcohol, There could be rain on the health services, the Department of Health Services for welfare cases.
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The Bureau assured us that when they put prisons in a community, that their policy is that if they find out,
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and they can find out, they keep track of the prisoners and their families.
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If they find out that the family is thinking of relocating or has relocated, they move the prisoner to another facility immediately.
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So we haven't had any trouble with that.
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Every resident was like Dory, eager to reassure us.
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Canyon City was a safe town.
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We didn't doubt that for a second.
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It was precisely their lack of concern that intrigued us.
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But did they really benefit from this prison industry that locked up their lives?
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It was parade day on Petroleum Avenue.
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Everyone had come to celebrate the pioneer years, years when gasoline flowed like wine and there were coal mines at old -time prisons.
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So, we come to our king, Ralph Carastia, and our queen, Darlene Carastia.
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Here we go.
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Come on.
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Thank you.
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a little different.
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Allen, the Supermax officer, had recommended a place, the Good Time Cafe on Main Street, Canyon City.
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Christian, the owner, had worked as a prison officer for seven years before opening it.
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When we walked in, his daughters were at his side.
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They were all smiles, even though it was rush hour.
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I was at the Colorado State Penitentiary, moving inmates constantly.
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Since I've opened this, a lot of the correctional officers that I used to work with now come here.
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I didn't want to make this a prison cafe.
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I wanted it to be kind of like a family -style restaurant, just to kind of separate from the prison.
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You tend to just take on the role of a correctional officer.
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You try and raise your family, and you tend to talk to your kids like an inmate.
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You know, when you talk to an inmate, it's basically yes or no. Where the kids grow up, you know, so you start to be stern,
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and it's just like, cut to the chase.
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We want to get to yes or no. You kind of put up a front.
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You know, you show no emotions at the prison, you know, because you're a correctional officer, you know, so.
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So here, now it's okay to cry.
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You know, I can let my emotions show again.
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And I think my kids like asking me questions again, you know, rather than yes or no, what do you want?
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We wolfed down one of Christian's famous sandwiches and hit the road again.
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So the prison business was just like any other.
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It had its hidden perversities, its stress in the workplace, its secrets.
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Just before the highway to Supermax, a house, one of a kind.
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We knocked on the door and Dr. Spinaris told us about what she'd seen and heard.
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And her concept of correction fatigue, an illness many people in town suffer from.
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This is where correction officers can come for psychological counseling.
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For example, they start seeing themselves as a cop all the time, like a warrior person.
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They start seeing themselves as a warrior all the time.
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So even if they're grocery shopping at Walmart or at Disney World, they're still on patrol, observing, studying, expecting danger.
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The world view changes drastically where people start thinking that everybody's a liar, everybody's a con, everybody is going to try to explain and manipulate,
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they don't trust anybody as a result.
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The correctional staff get very isolated, they don't talk to neighbors, they stay very distant from everybody.
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And they get in their cars, don't say hello to anybody, just get in their car, out of their car.
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So there is an isolation and a fear.
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It seemed like everyone had their own reasons, their own explanation, as if two worlds coexisted here,
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the town and the prisoners' families.
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Behind the routine lurked veiled glances, suppressed hatred and impossible friendships.
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As with this bus we saw plowing its way through the town every morning, releasing some guys, transferring others to a prison or a construction site.
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This was the real
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Canyon City, a village haunted by all of America's fears and ours too.
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Fear means having to lock your door, not being sure of who your neighbor is, worrying, anxiety.
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Well, and I'm glad you're going to ask every person
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because I'm sure every person is going to give you a different answer.
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Fear to me is, I guess, different.
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I'm concerned with my family.
432
So fear in dealing with my job is not fear of who I work with or who I'm interacting with every day.
433
Fear is not being able to return to them.
434
Fear?
435
What does fear mean?
436
Damn Frenchman.
437
I don't know.
438
I don't spend a lot of time thinking about fear.
439
What does fear mean to me?
440
Not much, apparently.
441
Not much.
442
The fearful America you encounter in Canyon City is also an America in recession.
443
Like this women's penitentiary, the one we'd been denied entrance to with the sheriff.
444
Closed down for good one week before we came to town.
445
Budget cuts.
446
Five million dollars saved.
447
All its inmates transferred.
448
Here are Don and Donelle, two of the five remaining guards at the deserted prison.
449
Ghosts, the jail's final inmates.
450
Donelle was the one who'd block our path.
451
Someday, she says, they'll reopen this prison.
452
One color stands out in Fremont County, orange.
453
It's the color of money, the color of prisoners, the color of the region's long -lost splendor.
454
On the day of the annual parade, everything's orange.
455
On Main Street, we see everybody we'd met so far.
456
.. by the Fremont County Sheriff Jim Biker, and of course the State Patrol was here, but apparently they are in pursuit of someone.
457
Even the flumps, the town's rock band, take part, Like everyone else.
458
And like everyone else, They've got some orange.
459
There, on the banner they've hung on the back of their truck.
460
But this orange belongs to the past and its fading memories.
461
Times aren't as prosperous as they used to be around here.
462
These are times of crisis.
463
One of the county's representatives smiles down from his orange and blue float.
464
His name's Ed Norton, a Republican.
465
He says it like it is.
466
It's also important to know that when a recession hits,
467
like we have seen hit America and Colorado and in Fremont County,
468
that when you have an industry like prisons, those jobs are not going to be involved in layoffs.
469
You're not going to be turning loose inmates during a recession.
470
You could call this the Canyon City Way, a single industry running at full capacity,
471
the prison industry, a kind of citadel against a sickness that has dripped the entire country.
472
It's recession time.
473
We have seen a positive economic impact from just the construction.
474
When you bring in thousands of dollars of pay to construction
475
workers who are on the job for even 18 months
476
or two years in a community that are building a multi -million dollar prison, then you can't snub your nose at that,
477
because buying groceries, eating at restaurants, and buying gasoline as they live among us while they're constructing prisons.
478
Credit card companies have been given billions and need to clean their books once
479
and for all and that's great news for you.
480
We're Credit Answers and we'd
481
We'd like to offer you free information
482
that will show you how to settle your credit card debt with payment plans customized for you.
483
It's yours free by calling 1 -800 -400 -0705.
484
Don't declare bankruptcy.
485
Live better.
486
Debt free.
487
But the Citadel has started to crumble.
488
The crisis seems to have struck at the very foundations of the system.
489
To the east of Canyon City, a mega prison is sprouting.
490
It's the Colorado State Penitentiary number two.
491
It was supposed to be state of the art.
492
It's a bottomless pit.
493
We're joined by its spokeswoman, Catherine Sanguinetti, a lovely woman,
494
always smiling, always impeccable, despite the lack of funds to pay the staff and the hail of criticism.
495
Colorado State Penitentiary two is costing the state approximately $163 million to build.
496
We currently do not have the money to open
497
Colorado State Penitentiary 2.
498
We were planning on opening it this next fiscal year to save 17 million dollars.
499
We chose to push that out to August of 2010.
500
The foreman showing us around occasionally runs his hands over the wall and says, that's reinforced concrete.
501
We bring it in from Denver, then put it together here like Lego.
502
At the end of the corridor, this Lego suddenly takes on a bitter aftertaste.
503
So the rumors in town were true.
504
Anything is possible in prison town.
505
The cells at Colorado State Penitentiary 2 have been built by inmates at Fremont Correctional facility in our welding shop.
506
And then we've stored them on the complex until time for them to be installed at CSP2.
507
They've all been completed.
508
The inmates have also made some...
509
sells for other companies, some private prisons and other states as well.
510
The prison industry seems to have come up with the perfect formula.
511
The customer becomes the supplier, and the supplier provides labor at unbeatable knockdown prices.
512
There's one last thing we'd like to understand before we leave town.
513
A casual comment by the spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Corrections about the cells they built for private prisons.
514
We had to get to the bottom of this commercial partnership.
515
Frank Smith arrived at the Riviera Motel right on time.
516
It was our last day in the area.
517
He just racked up 500 miles in one go, just for this, just for us, just to share his obsession with private prisons.
518
We call them for -profit prisons rather than private prisons because it clarifies the issue.
519
It makes it much more understandable.
520
They charge an awful lot of money to keep inmates who are typically lower custody inmates.
521
Private prisons make money the longer prisoners stay.
522
And that's why, in fact, they influence the laws that have more people arrested and convicted and have longer terms when they do get convicted.
523
Frank Smith is an activist on all fronts and every highway since 1996.
524
As for us, however many requests we made to the market leader who ran prisons all over Colorado, we always got the same response,
525
categorical and unwavering, a standard answer.
526
Even though Canyon City didn't have any for -profit prisons in the strict sense of the term, we could sense them lurking all around us,
527
like private branches of a state system Fremont County was pioneering.
528
The state and the private sector worked hand in hand, dividing up the prison business between themselves.
529
The power of the lobbying of these private prison organizations is immense.
530
The Corrections Corporation of America, the largest one, spends $3 million just lobbying
531
Congress, And then they spend equal amounts of money around the country lobbying state and municipal politicians and executives.
532
Private prisons are an extension of the capitalist dream, which is to exploit everything, to exploit labor, to exploit the political process,
533
to endanger people to the end of more
534
The private prison is an excellent example of that, just like the war machine is an example of that.
535
It's totally out of control.
536
It's virtually unaccountable.
537
It's unaudited.
538
So this was the deal.
539
The private sector paid for the penitentiaries they built.
540
In return, the state guaranteed it a steady flow of merchandise.
541
Prisoners, in other words.
542
At this point, Frank began to tell us a story about another state.
543
There were two judges that were discovered who had taken $2 .6 million in bribes to send children to jail,
544
to two for -profit prisons, mostly for very innocuous offenses,
545
very trivial offenses, because the contractors were making so much money on keeping these children.
546
So children who really hadn't done anything wrong at all
547
or who had committed an offense that was so minor
548
that the sort of thing that they might be held after the end of school,
549
during a school day, they found themselves doing months or even years in these two for -profit prisons.
550
It was an extraordinary scandal, But the scandal died out.
551
The news of it died out after just a few weeks.
552
The time had come for our final appointment.
553
Come what may, we just.. had to hear from someone who'd been inside a private prison.
554
So we set off up into the Rockies, two hours' drive from Canyon City, and this is where we got to, the end of the world,
555
the end of the road, Donna Como's house, 20 years in jail, a third of that in private prisons, plus some time working with juvenile delinquents.
556
My second week on duty, I was kicked in the head and about knocked out by a youth offender, and I said, you know,
557
I want to press charges, and they said no. And that particular adolescent shouldn't have been probably housed there.
558
He was on a large number of, I don't know, medications for his emotional control.
559
Probably would have been better served in a mental health facility.
560
Probably should not have been residing in that particular facility, but they wouldn't let me do anything to bring that to light.
561
Because if your beds are empty, you're not making any money.
562
So they house individuals that shouldn't be housed, and they take a risk on their staff on a daily basis.
563
Donna was traumatized and transferred until one day when she was posted to a different private prison where a ride broke out.
564
The prisoners were protesting against prison conditions.
565
In her chalet, Donna flipped hesitantly through her photo album.
566
I am a man.
567
I understand that states and federal governments end up in a situation where they don't have the money to build new institutions,
568
but there's other solutions to that.
569
Change your sentencing laws.
570
It may not be favorable with the public, you know, so be it.
571
But it's better than doing what we're doing, which is basically you're leasing out human life.
572
How should we put it?
573
We felt like her face looked exhausted.
574
Somewhere out there in Fremont County, our friends the Flumps were playing Nirvana.
575
We turned around, we said our goodbyes, and we left Prison Valley.
576
All the sense of back hurts, she's just as bored as me
577
She caught me off my guard, she makes me leap away, she makes me sick
578
It's me, at the sea, let me clear up, turn your wings
579
Let me take a ride at yourself, once you feel yourself
580
Now, I'm so wrong, now it's all,
581
I'm gonna see you, and I'm sure you're gonna take a ride with yourself, I'm gonna see you.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “The Town Surrounded by Prisons”. This video has 581 sentences and 6449 words to shadow. The speech runs for 58:36. The speaker talks at a steady 110 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. 83% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| inmate noun | /ˈɪn.meɪt/ | A person confined to an institution such as a prison (as a convict) or hospital (as a patient). |
| prisoner noun | /ˈpɹɪzənə/ | A person incarcerated in a prison, while on trial or serving a sentence. |
| motel noun | /moʊˈtɛl/ | A type of hotel or lodging establishment, often located near a major highway, which typically features a series of rooms whose entrances are immediately… |
| recession noun | /ɹɪˈsɛʃn̩/ | The act or an instance of receding or withdrawing. |
| concrete adjective | /ˌkɑnˈkɹit/ | Real, actual, tangible. |
| correction noun | /kəˈɹɛkʃən/ | The act of correcting. |
| uniform noun | /ˈjunɪˌfɔɹm/ | A distinctive outfit that serves to identify members of a group, company, prison inmates, etc. |
| offense noun | /əˈfɛns/ | A crime or sin. |
| sheriff noun | /ˈʃɛɹɪf/ | (High Sheriff) An official of a shire or county office, responsible for carrying out court orders, law enforcement and other duties. |
| chamber noun | /ˈt͡ʃeɪ̯mbɚ/ | The private room of an individual, especially of someone wealthy or noble. |
| innocent adjective | /ˈɪnəsənt/ | Free from guilt, sin, or immorality. |
| patrol noun | /pəˈtɹoʊl/ | A going of the rounds along the chain of sentinels and between the posts, by a guard, usually consisting of three or four men, to insure greater security from… |
| lobby noun | /ˈlɑ.bi/ | An entryway or reception area; vestibule; passageway; corridor. |
| nickname noun | /ˈnɪkneɪm/ | A familiar, invented name for a person or thing used instead of the actual name of the person or thing, often based on some noteworthy characteristic. |
| exploit noun | /ˈɛksplɔɪt/ | A heroic or extraordinary deed. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| find out verb | To discover, as by asking or investigating. | |
| lock up verb | /ˌlɒk ˈʌp/ | To imprison or incarcerate (someone). |
| come back verb | To return to a place. | |
| die out verb | To become extinct. | |
| get out of verb | To leave, exit or escape from; to become free of. | |
| grow up verb | To mature and become an adult. | |
| take away verb | /ˌteɪk əˈweɪ/ | To remove something and put it in a different place. |
| break out verb | To escape, especially forcefully or defiantly. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- I mean, that's mass incarceration.
- We couldn't believe our eyes.
- You haven't been over it yet, have you?
- What does fear mean to me?
- How should we put it?
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Conditional sentences if + clause, will/would + verb — a condition and its result | if they do, they will lose |
| “Used to” used to + verb — a past habit or state that is no longer true | used to be · used to work |
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on | We've been fantasizing · I've been doing |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | I've heard · has always been · have seen |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 120 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, they're, we're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: clothing /ˈkloʊðɪŋ/, breathe /bɹiːð/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: recession /ɹɪˈsɛʃn̩/, correction /kəˈɹɛkʃən/, sheriff /ˈʃɛɹɪf/, friendship /ˈfɹɛn(d)ʃɪp/, emotion /ɪˈməʊ.ʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: administrative /ədˈmɪn.ɪ.stɹə.tɪv/, ceremony /ˈsɛɹ.əˌmoʊ.ni/, recognition /ˌɹɛkəɡˈnɪʃ(ə)n/, anxiety /æŋˈzaɪ.əti/, unusual /ʌnˈjuːʒ(u)əl/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Shadow it sentence by sentence at normal speed, repeating each one until your rhythm matches the speaker.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like inmate, prisoner, motel.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.