Ken Herman

DATE March 22, 2001 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Ken Herman discusses covering George W. Bush both as
governor of Texas and as president
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

After covering George W. Bush's tenure as governor of Texas, journalist Ken
Herman is now covering Bush's first six months in the White House. We invited
Herman to talk with us about how President Bush compares with Governor Bush.
Herman is reporting for the Austin American-Statesman and Cox Newspapers.
He's covered Texas politics since 1979.

George W. Bush has talked a lot about bipartisanship. I asked Ken Herman what
he thinks the president has been doing to act in a bipartisan way.

Mr. KEN HERMAN (Austin American-Statesman): He always says there are other
people up here who disagree with him, but he respects them. I was in the East
Room for an event earlier this week with women business leaders, and he
brought that up again. And he does all the time, that he knows everyone isn't
going to agree with him. He has this line about--it would be so much easier
if he was a dictator and, you know, could just get what he wants done because
he wants it done, but he knows that not to be the case. So he tries to tone
down the rhetoric in public. You'll never hear him, I don't believe, say
anything bitter about a Democrat. He will always say, you know, `They're
wrong, I disagree, but I respect them.' He's really trying to change the tone
on that.

He also is--he believes some respect for the presidency has been lost around
the country through activities of the previous administration. And it's very
big for him to, in his mind, restore that. You've got to remember, the
presidency has now sort of become the family business for the Bushes, so they
have some vested interest in it. And he's working at that.

And it's interesting, I had a chance encounter with him, such that you can a
chance encounter with the president, last week on the South Lawn after an
event. And I was talking to him, briefly, about these many out-of-town trips
he takes. This week, he's in Florida at an event. He's going on the road,
shopping his plan around. And he was telling me about how, you know, the
American people seem to really enjoy the trappings of the presidency, seeing
the flags, the limousines. And you could tell in his mind it was--he's glad
that people see these things and are excited about it. So he is really
working to, in his mind, tone down the rhetoric.

GROSS: So you're saying that, you know, his public manner in Washington has
been bipartisan, but his early actions have included policies or policy
changes that have infuriated a lot of Democrats. For example, he reversed his
position on regulating carbon dioxide, which is one of the gasses believed to
contribute to global warming. He undid the new Labor Department rule on
ergonomics, which was aimed at preventing repetitive stress injuries like
carpal tunnel syndrome. He imposed a new federal ban on federal aid to
international family planning groups that counsel patients about abortion or
promote abortion. How are actions like that being perceived in Washington in
terms of his feelings about bipartisanship?

Mr. HERMAN: Well, they are perceived as what they are. They're somewhat
contentious. `Bipartisanship,' in the Bush view, does not mean, `I will not
do something I think should be done because someone on the other side doesn't
want it done.' That's not really his definition. His definition is, `We're
going to disagree on some things, but let's try to do it in a civil manner.
But I am the president. I am the first Republican president since Eisenhower
to have control of both houses of Congress,' albeit by the slimmest of margins
in the Senate. And he does not seem willing or prone to give up any of that
power in the name of bipartisanship.

Clearly, in these early actions--and there are many more you could have listed
on there--it's not taking us the tradition 100 days to sort of put a brand on
this presidency. It is clear--What?--60 days into it that President George W.
Bush means business. And that means for him that the Bush family thinking of,
in general terms, `What's good for business is good for America.' He is a
businessman. He is the first president ever with a master's of business
administration degree. And he seems to be mastering putting together a
business administration here as we watch. And it'll be interesting to see how
far it goes.

Also this week, there was the EPA announcement of removing some arsenic level
standards in water. It's a business-friendly move, and it reflects his view
that government, in general, is something that gets in the way of business.
He often talks, and has talked for years, about government's limited role.
Government is supposed to just create an atmosphere that encourages
entrepreneurial spirit and sort of gets out of the way as much as possible to
let people succeed and fail on their own as their talents, as luck, as
business cycles allow. The administration's take is that these are things
that got in the way of business and unnecessarily so. And the final component
would be, `There are other ways to accomplish whatever good these regulations
did. So don't worry. We are not abandoning people to carpal tunnel syndrome.
We are not making water dangerous. We are not hurting unions.' Of course, it
remains to be seen whether that's true.

GROSS: President Bush is pushing for a $1.6 trillion tax cut that Democrats
say largely benefits the wealthy. How is he working Congress behind the
scenes now?

Mr. HERMAN: It's an ongoing effort. And one way he's working Congress behind
the scenes is by working in front of the scenes, by getting out around the
country and encouraging people to e-mail and write their members of Congress
in favor of this tax cut. When you got out on the road with the president
since he has taken office, it's very, very similar to campaign events. He is
trying to build up heat out there for this tax cut, and it's an interesting
process to watch. His belief is if, indeed, a tax cut is proper, all
Americans should get it. The unspoken second line is always, `And that means
wealthier people will get more back,' a simple function of they pay more.

GROSS: Is there any discord within the Bush administration on the tax cut or
on any of the other policy changes or policy proposals?

Mr. HERMAN: No, they seem to be speaking with one voice. You never really
know, of course. There could be some dissent. I was with an administration
member last night, and we were talking about the daily senior staff meetings
they have, I believe, at 7:15 in the mornings over there at the White House.
And I said, you know, `When everyone sits down, is it just "Kum Ba Ya," you
know, peace, love and understanding, we all get along?' and he kind of laughed
saying, `No, of course not.' But the difference is more on approach, on `How
do we'--you know, `What's the best way to sell some package? What are the
best words to use?' But they are aligned on message.

It is a great strength of George W. Bush of his ability to get from point A to
point B in his mind and ignore all the noise on the side. He knows going into
any short-range fight or long-range fights, it's just going to careen out of
control. But he's just going to keep sort of moving forward and ignore it as
best as he can. We saw it first in his 1994 race against Ann Richards, where
he picked four issues he was going to run on and he just talked about them
until everyone was tired of hearing about them, at least those of us who
traveled with him and heard it every day. But, you know, you also come to
realize to penetrate the public consciousness on some of this, that's what it
takes, a lot of time on-task. And there was a lot of noise on the sidelines
and dissonance and attempts or temptations to get him off message. Never
happened. Just kept moving straight ahead.

And I think that's what we're seeing here now. We certainly saw it during the
campaign that had--you know, it was a rock 'n' roll roller-coaster ride with a
lot of a twists and turns even the Bush campaign never really anticipated.
But on core message, they kind of just kept moving ahead. And I think that's
what we're seeing at least in these early days at the White House.

GROSS: There was an article in The New York Times Monday of this week about
how President Bush has the ear of the conservative think tanks and
conservative coalitions. It quoted Grover Norquist, president of Americans
for Tax Reform and a leading conservative strategist, as saying, "There isn't
an `us and them' with this administration. They is `us,' we is `them.'" Is
that your perception, too, that in spite of talk about bipartisanship, that he
is very, very close with the conservative think tanks and coalitions, and
really has their ear and is working closely with them?

Mr. HERMAN: Well, there's probably no doubt they're philosophically aligned
on most issues, so it's sort of a natural marriage. But it may not be that
simple. It's just been an interesting dynamic to watch on the faith-based
issues front, one of his signature efforts, and frankly, more so than tax cuts
or anything else could make a lasting change in federal government--the
relationship between church and state--and just very important facets of our
democracy. Some of the top criticism has come from people on the right,
people who supported him for the president, people who've supported the
concept and now sort of have confused some people with the questions they've
asked, people like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, a Bush adviser named
Marvin Olasky from Austin. And they are, it seems like now, suddenly asking
what appears to be a very basic of, you know, `Fine. We can move forward with
faith-based and decide that religious institutions who offer social services
in a non-proselytizing way should be able to compete for federal funds.' And
now the first question is: How do we define what a religion is, or who a
religion is?

GROSS: Yeah. Specifically something that Pat Robertson said on "The 700
Club" was, you know, warning his listeners that it was possible that, you
know, Scientologists and Hare Krishna people could get funding from the
government if this goes through.

Mr. HERMAN: Yeah. And that's, I would imagine, a legitimate question of,
where is the cutoff between what's a religion? And what I think a religion
may be a lot different than what you think is a religion. And that's where
you get into the long tradition in America of being very squeamish about the
dangerous intersection of church and state.

GROSS: President Bush's working style has been described as following a
corporate model because he delegates so much responsibility. He's said to not
like his briefing papers to run over a page or two at most. He's initiated a
dress code for his staff: jackets and ties for men, business attire for
women. He stresses punctuality. He's said to leave his office by about 6:30.
It's said he expects his staff to spend time with families in the evening and
have time off on the weekends. Is the staff actually getting time off like
the president is or are they picking up the pieces when he goes home early?

Mr. HERMAN: I can tell you from talking with some just this week that, no, a
lot of them are putting in very long hours, some especially on weekends. Days
for the administration people start early because the president likes to start
early. And then I think for a lot of the staffers, they go late because
there's just a lot to do.

But that is his style. He is the great delegator. He surrounds himself with
people he trusts, who he believes understand where he wants to go and he
empowers them to move ahead. He likes things to run on time. He despises
when cell phones or pagers go off during an event. There was an event this
week where the cardinal sin was committed and someone did not turn off their
cell phone, and it went off during an event with Prime Minister Sharon of
Israel. And the president looked to the aide who was in charge of such things
and said to that aide, in a quite public way, `You apparently did not do your
job well.' And I'd be amazed if it ever happened again because it was sincere
consternation from the chief executive on something that, for some reason,
means a lot to him.

I think, again, it goes, in his mind, to rudeness and civility. You show up
on time for events. You try to make them run on time. They end when they
should end. And you don't have interruptions like cell phones or beepers when
other people are sort of conducting business.

GROSS: When you were covering George Bush in Texas, where he was governor,
did you feel that with all of the delegating that he did that he still really
comprehended all of the policies being put into effect and if he comprehended
the issues in their full complexity?

Mr. HERMAN: `Does anybody?' I guess, is the obvious response. But yeah. A
smaller stage, again, education became his big issue, as he says it is his
priority here, a very complicated topic. But in Texas, there was a feeling
that he had a pretty good comprehension of education and where he wanted to go
with it. And also, maybe more so, that he operates out of a basic set of
philosophies that he thinks he can overlay on most topics and get from point A
to point B, which always is his goal. And that he is not shy about sort of
hiring the talent, of sitting someone down on topic X and saying, `Here's a
problem I see. Here's where I'd like it to be. Help me get there,' as
opposed to being--someone saying, you know, `I know how to get there,' you
know. He's not shy about saying--again, about hiring the expertise and
saying, `Here's my philosophy. Someone work out the mechanics for me.'

GROSS: My guest is reporter Ken Herman of the Austin American-Statesman.
After covering George W. Bush as governor, he's covering President Bush. More
after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guest is Ken Herman, and he's covering the White House for the
first six months of the Bush administration for the Austin American-Statesman
and for Cox Newspapers. He's the former capital bureau chief in Austin for
the Austin American-Statesman. He's covered state politics in Texas since
1979.

One of President Bush's top issues is education. How would you say he left
the schools in Texas? What were some of the policy or funding changes he was
responsible for as governor?

Mr. HERMAN: The big thing he pushed for, one of the big things, was an end to
social promotion, this business of you move from one grade to the other just
because another birthday has passed and maybe you are not really achieving,
and it's a stump speech line we heard ad infinitum, as we heard all stump
speech lines, of, `The question shouldn't be, "How old are you?" The question
should be, "What do you know?" And the only way we can tell what you know is
test it.' And he is an unending advocate of testing. We're still seeing how
that'll work out. The social promotion portion of it really doesn't kick
in--I forget the year, but we're probably a year or two away from it, and what
we're facing there is a potential of--the way the system works, of having a
widely administered statewide test that, if children in grade school don't
pass, they don't get promoted. And at the current rates, unless some
education improves very quickly in sort of a very unexpected way, there may be
many, many children for whom third grade becomes two or three very difficult
years. And we'll see how the public reacts to that.

GROSS: Do you get any special consideration from George W. Bush because you
knew him as governor, you covered him as governor?

Mr. HERMAN: Let me say yes and no, which now makes me a politician, I guess.
It's a very interesting hierarchy in Washington. Clearly the major Eastern
newspapers who do this all the time--it's important to the administration,
apparently, to keep them happy. Yes, I get some things, but in general, the
pecking order works as it does regardless of who the president is. On the
other hand, I do have good contact with people who worked for him in Austin
for many years; some, indeed, who worked in Austin even before he got there
and then became part of the Bush team. And they are still--you know, they
will return the phone calls and they're cordial.

But even in Austin, you have to remember about Bush people around him, they're
very loyal people. This was not, in Austin, generally a group of great
leakers and it hasn't been here. Now when we start to really play the game
here and it's more in their interest to be providing some information, we'll
see how it works. On the other hand, there is some--when I can get face time
with him--I've known him for a long time now. We have a cordial professional
relationship. We've had our ups and downs over the years over things I've
written. In his sort of peculiar way, he has a thick skin about it. He
understands that he's not gonna like everything that's written, and if he
worries about it, he will indeed drive himself crazy.

After an event recently in the Rose Garden, when my family was in town, he had
gone back into the Oval Office. Some of us had lingered in the Rose Garden,
just reporters chatting among ourselves. Most of them left. He then came out
and saw me there and had seen my son there and yelled over to me, `Hey,
where's Jeremy?' talking about my 14-year-old son, so I went in and got
Jeremy, who was waiting in the press room, and my wife, who is also a reporter
for the newspaper, Sharon, and, you know, he chatted with us for about 15
minutes there. It was during that that my 14-year-old son chose to lobby the
president on Napster's behalf, I believe, fully an independent effort. And I
can--my son found out quickly he was very unsuccessful in his lobbying
efforts, as the president expressed very little sympathy for Napster's point
of view. I told my son after--I said, `You know, 15 minutes of face time with
the president on an issue like that--you know, a lobbyist'd probably
get--What?--a million dollars or so.' I think my went home to prepare an
invoice to send to Napster, so we'll see how that turns out.

But, no, they are playing the Washington game up here, such that it is, of the
networks and the major newspapers up here are very important and that's who
they need to keep happy. On the other hand, one of the reasons they like to
travel is--same thing during the campaign--it's a way of sort of bypassing the
White House press corps and getting the message out directly. And twice so
far since he's been in office, he's brought in regional reporters from
newspapers around the country and had them for sort of a group interview
session, six, seven, eight people at a time. There's been two of those so far
with people from papers really pretty much around the country.

GROSS: Is there much of a cloud over the White House because of the Florida
fiasco and the knowledge that Gore won the popular vote and, by one recount,
would have won Florida, too, and therefore the election?

Mr. HERMAN: The administration is moving forward as if it never happened. He
is the president and they dislike when you remind him of the unpleasantness
because, again, it was a very trying time for the country and, you know, in a
lot of people's minds, has put a cloud over it. But they are ignoring it and
just moving forward.

GROSS: After Clinton's pardon list was released and Clinton was criticized by
Democrats and Republicans for the people who he pardoned, what was the
reaction inside the Bush White House? Was there any pleasure in watching
Clinton be involved in another scandal?

Mr. HERMAN: I would surmise yes. They would say no. They went out of their
way in extraordinary efforts to stay out of all of that. Even when there was
word about the damage done to the White House by the outgoing administration,
the Bush people wouldn't talk about it publicly because they just want to move
forward, they want to set a new tone, `Here, we don't want to blame anybody.'
And it was a very strange thing. Perhaps the first attempted cover-up in the
Bush White House was of things that the previous administration might have
done. But, no, they went out of their way, as if there'd been a meeting where
they all sat down and said, `We are not going to take any public pleasure in
any of this and just move forward.' I think it was a clever strategy because
it sort of had a life of its own and they didn't need to be pushing it and
they certainly could look very magnanimous about staying out of it.

GROSS: What have been some of the most difficult things for you in adjusting
to covering Washington politics after covering state politics in Texas since
1979?

Mr. HERMAN: Incredible difference. In Texas, covering the Legislature is a
very hands-on, face-to-face experience. We have a citizen Legislature made up
of 181 members who are each paid $600 a month to do their job and that's it.
It's not supposed to be your full-time job. The Legislature meets only for
six months every other year. And you just wander onto the House floor and the
Senate floor and you chat with whoever you want to talk with. And some of
them are fairly common people, as I guess a representative body is supposed to
be. By the time people get to Washington, even the least sophisticated of
them have some level of sophistication. The process does produce that. And
it's frustrating. It's a lot of effort to get relatively little, and I'm used
to, just from covering a Statehouse, just walking up to the people I want to
see and talking to them and generally getting an answer. Here, you talk to an
aide, who talks to an adviser, who gets back with you maybe and it's
cumbersome, frustrating and it sometimes seems like journalism performed in
molasses. And now some of it, again, is--I'm new up here, learning the ways,
learning the people. And I'm sure, though it's harder and harder to remember,
when I first got to Austin, it probably seemed equally convoluted.

We also just accessed, when he was governor--any governor of Texas you could
see whenever you wanted because the car was parked outside and, if nothing
else, you waited by the car. And when the governor, be it Ann Richards, Bill
Clements, Mark White, the many governors I covered, they sort of had to get in
their car to go home at night and you could always hijack them there and see
if they'd answer a few questions. I still haven't found a place at the White
House where I can wait and be guaranteed to see the president every day.

GROSS: I'm not surprised to hear that.

Mr. HERMAN: I'm glad to hear it, I think.

GROSS: Well, Ken Herman, I want to thank you very much for talking with us.

Mr. HERMAN: Sure. I enjoyed it.

GROSS: Ken Herman is covering the first six months of the Bush White House
for the Austin American-Statesman and Cox Newspapers. He's covered Texas
state politics since 1979.

I'm Terry Gross and this is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

GROSS: Coming up, the prison boom and its consequences. We talk with Wall
Street Journal reporter Joseph Hallinan about his new book, "Going Up the
River: Travels in a Prison Nation." And Ken Tucker reviews "Poisonville,"
the new CD by Ronny Elliott.

(Soundbite of music)

Unidentified Man: ...we raise cotton, canine or corn.

Unidentified Group of Men: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Unidentified Man: Potatoes and tomatoes and a bed ain't all.

Unidentified Group of Men: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Unidentified Man: Back is weak and I done got tired.

Unidentified Group of Men: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Unidentified Man: Got to tighten up just to save my hide.

Unidentified Group of Men: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Unidentified Man: Boss on the horse and he's watching us all.

Unidentified Group of Men: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Unidentified Man: Better tighten up. Don't go catch the ...(unintelligible).

Unidentified Group of Men: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Unidentified Man: Wonder if the major will go my bail.

Unidentified Group of Men: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Interview: Journalist Joseph Hallinan talks about his new book
and his experiences reporting about prisons and prison systems
in the US
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

Building and maintaining prisons has become a booming business. The first
for-profit prison was built in 1983. Now there are more than 150 of them.
But prisons aren't just profitable for the companies that run them. They can
boost the local economy and offer a lucrative market to product manufacturers.
Journalist Joseph Hallinan has written a new book about how the merger of
punishment and profit is reshaping prison culture and the economy of prison
towns. The book is called "Going Up the River: Travels in a Prison Nation,"
and it's based on his visits to prisons around the country. Hallinan is a
reporter for The Wall Street Journal. He's written about the criminal justice
system for nearly a decade. I asked him how a prison can help the local
economy.

Mr. JOSEPH HALLINAN (Author, "Going Up the River"): It provides a number of
tremendously stable jobs. If you open up a prison of, say--oh, a prison that
holds 500 inmates, you might employ perhaps, depends on the prison, 1,000
people, either directly or indirectly--as guards, as doctors, as nurses, as
administrators. And there's the spin-off effect. The prison, for instance,
has to buy food from somewhere, so the local restaurant or the local food
distributor, he gets the business. The prison has to be built, so the local
contractor, he gets the business. The landscape around the prison has to be
maintained. If the inmates don't do that, than a landscape company has to do
that. A prison just generates a tremendous number of jobs and injects
tremendous amounts of money into the economy.

GROSS: Has something changed that communities used to be afraid of having a
prison in their area, and now a lot of places want a prison because it's good
for business?

Mr. HALLINAN: Something did change. People began to look at prisons not as
this horrible place that might drive down the economy, drive down home values,
but actually as a social good. They began to see it, A, as a place where they
could punish inmates and it did society a larger good, and then very narrowly
they began to see this place that could do them good. You had, in the 1980s,
a number of events happen. You had many heavy industry plants in the United
States close because of competition by the Japanese. You had many military
bases close. You had a number of other factors go on that sucked out many
solid, good-paying jobs out of the small, remote communities in America.
Suddenly these people were desperate for jobs to keep their young people
around, to keep their towns vibrant. They shopped around and one of the few
things they could find was prisons.

GROSS: You visited a couple of prisons in Beeville, Texas, which is in south
Texas. How have the prisons in Beeville affected the economy there? Beeville
has a population of 13,000, and you say 7,200 of those people are inmates.

Mr. HALLINAN: Right. Correct. The people I talked to in Beeville actually
seemed to prefer the prison to the naval base. They thought the jobs were
much more stable. They thought that the prisons would not go anywhere the way
the naval base did when a number of bases around the United States were
closed. And the income's spread all the way around the town. The guy who ran
the local Mexican restaurant, he had much more business. He added on to his
place. The former judge who owned the pawn shop thought his business had
grown tremendously. The furniture shop in town, they said their business was
good. Everybody was very happy with this.

I had even teachers from local schools who had quit their jobs and gone to
work in the prison. They said the pay was better, the hours were shorter and
they said the stress was less, believe it or not.

GROSS: The prisoners in Beeville have to work in the fields in
plantation-style jobs.

Mr. HALLINAN: They do, very much so. I went to the Garza units one morning
about 7:00, shortly before dawn, and went behind the prison, where the inmates
are lined up. They're all wearing their white uniforms with green quilted
jackets. And they line up two-by-two and they're searched and inspected and
then carried out into the field on a trailer behind a tractor, guards on
horseback trotting next to them. The guards have either pistols shoved into
their belts--there's one guard called a high rider who rides off from the
other guards with a rifle, a 30-30 I believe, and his job is to shoot any
inmates that escape. And inmates are then unloaded into the field, given
their tools--in this case it was a tool called the aggie(ph), which is kind of
a thresher, if you will--and they set out to work. And as they work, they
sing, and the songs they sing are old slave songs, which is odd because not
all the inmates are black. Many, of course, are white and Hispanic, and yet,
the songs that they sing go back directly to plantation songs, and this has
been documented by a number of musicologists who went to the Texas prison
systems back in the 1940s, '50s and 60s, recorded the songs the inmates sang
then as they worked, and they're almost virtually identical to the songs they
sing now.

GROSS: And is this considered constructive work? Is this considered
punishment, reform?

Mr. HALLINAN: I think maybe a few people thought there might be some
reformative qualities in a day of hard labor, but I think primarily
punishment. The work I saw really didn't need to be done. For instance, it
was clearing ditches and cutting weeds, work which you can do with machines.
You don't need to have a hundred shackled inmates under armed guard out in the
field to do that kind of work.

GROSS: Let's look at an example of a high-tech prison that you visited. How
about Pelican Bay Prison in Crescent City, California? This prison has seven
layers of security to prevent escape. Why don't you describe that security.

Mr. HALLINAN: It's extremely elaborate, and much of it you can't really see.
As with many prisons, in fact, if you look at them just to the naked eye, you
can't really see a lot of the security that's involved. Only once you get
inside the prison do you realize how really secure and, in Pelican Bay's case,
really dangerous many of them are.

GROSS: What do you see inside?

Mr. HALLINAN: When I walked in Pelican Bay, for instance, I was walking
around through one of the buildings with a number of guards, and I saw a large
building which was initially designed to be a gymnasium, but because of
overcrowding they were turning it into bunk-bed cell spaces. And I saw a
large board on the wall that looked something like a blackboard, but kind of
rubbery, and I noticed some smudges on it. I turned to one of the guards and
asked him, `What's with the board?' And he said, `That's a warning shot
board.' And I looked at him and I said, `A warning shot board? What do you
mean?' He said, `That's where we fire warning shots.' The board was actually
made of rubber to absorb the bullets when fired inside. If the inmates in the
cell block were to act up, the guards would open fire with live ammunition,
first at the warning shot board, and then if the inmates didn't behave, they'd
lower their guns and aim them at the inmates. And only then do you really get
a feel for just how very, very dangerous a place like that is. And they've
had a number of inmates killed there.

GROSS: What are some of the other aspects of high-tech security at this
prison?

Mr. HALLINAN: If you deep into the prison, the most secure place is a place
known as the security housing unit, SHU, or SHU (pronounced shoe) as it's
pronounced. And you walk in there and it's almost like walking into an
intensive care ward at the hospital. I was recently in a hospital and sat a
nurses' station and watched as they monitored EKG devices and small, little
screens, and that is exactly what the guards do. They're completely incased
in a booth somewhat akin to an FAA control tower, if you can imagine that,
with glass all the way around. And they have a number of screens that are
attached to cameras which monitor inmates in their cells so they can flip a
switch and see who's doing what at any given time. The lights are down low,
people speak in whispers and all the cells are electronically controlled. You
don't see anybody out in the hallways.

You don't really detect much movement at all. Everything is structured so
there's very little guard-inmate interaction. You don't have guards talking
to inmates. The inmates are shackled virtually everywhere they go when they
do leave the cells. And it's very white, it's very quiet. There's virtually
no kind of stimulation at all. If you're inside the cell, it's blank walls.
Outside the cell, it's blank walls. And that's the way many people spend
years upon years of their lives.

GROSS: What are supposed to be the advantages of the new high-tech prisons?

Mr. HALLINAN: A couple. I guess the one that gets stated most often is that
they're efficient. Many times these high-tech prisons allow prisons to watch
a number of inmates with fewer guards. Five guards in an old prison, for
instance, would be needed to watch inmates, whereas in some of the high-tech
prisons maybe only one is needed because of the use of cameras and other
devices. But as I went to a number of these prisons, they seemed to me to be
intentionally punitive, and the people who run them acknowledge that, that
with fewer guards around they're able to deny inmates any type of interaction
and the inmates sit alone in their cells and this is used as pressure to make
the inmates conform.

GROSS: Is there any way of knowing the psychological impact that these
supermaximum, high-tech prisons have on the inmates?

Mr. HALLINAN: I don't know of any quantitative studies, but a number of these
prisons have produced lawsuits, and I talked to the people who were involved
in them, and almost to a person, the psychiatrists who go in there describe
them as mentally debilitating. They wound find inmates who smeared themselves
with their own feces, who cut themselves and drew or smeared blood on the
walls, people who were babbling, people who were incoherent. And the prisons,
interesting enough, didn't really deny this. In fact, in Tams(ph) they were
pretty open that they were--about pushing an inmate to his breaking point, and
that that was an intentional device that they would be using to change his
behavior.

GROSS: Do you get the impression that the supermaximum prisons are more for
the convenience of the guards than they are for the future of the prisoners?

Mr. HALLINAN: You know, it's very interesting trying to figure out the
purpose of the supermaxes. They vary from place to place. I went to
Virginia, where they were building a supermax at a place called Wallen's
Ridge, a mountain town that's way down in the very toe of the state, as many
supermaxes are. They're almost always in very, very remote places. And I
asked a number of people what the purpose of the prison was, what you're
trying to accomplish here. And at first, they would tell me, `Well, this is
for the worst of the worst,' which is a phrase that gets used quite a bit.
And you press them on that and say, `Well, who exactly is the worst of the
worst?' And you found, over time, that definition changed, and as it changed,
it became more lenient and more lenient and more lenient until you had people
in these supermax prisons who were serving relatively short terms, say five
years, for non-violent offenses. As criminals go, that's hardly among the
worst of the worst.

And as I talked to the folks, I began to think that the supermax served as
some sort of proxy for society exacting its revenge on the inmates, that these
were very, very tough places and they were designed to be very tough, and the
public felt good that these inmates were having a very rough time of it, that
they weren't in prisons that were perceived to be very lenient places, places
where inmates had the run of the place and could watch TV, order Playboy
magazine, pump iron, do all these things that get a lot of taxpayers very
upset.

GROSS: So you can't do that stuff at the supermaximum security prisons?

Mr. HALLINAN: Generally, no. You are--imagine yourself in a room about the
size of a twin bed, where you can touch both walls with your outstretched
arms, where it's not much longer than you are tall, so that when you lie down
on a bed, your feet very nearly touch the wall. And that's it. That's your
home. That's your home for two years, five years, 10 years. That is all you
see of the world--no sky, no sun, nothing like that. It can drive you to the
point of madness.

GROSS: Joseph Hallinan is my guest. His new book is called "Going Up the
River: Travels in a Prison Nation" and this new book is about prisons or the
so-called prison industrial complex. Hallinan writes for The Wall Street
Journal.

Let's take a short break here, and then we'll talk some more. This is FRESH
AIR.

Unidentified Man: Well, I believe I'll roll on.

Unidentified Men: (In unison): Down the line.

Unidentified Man: Well, I believe I'll roll on.

Unidentified Men: (In unison): Down the line.

Unidentified Man: Well, I believe I'll roll on.

Unidentified Men: (In unison): Down the line. It takes a number-one driver
down the line.

Unidentified Man: Well, Black Betty's in the...

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Wall Street Journal reporter
Joseph Hallinan. His new book about prisons in America is called "Going Up
the River," and he's traveled to many prisons around the country reporting on
conditions there.

How do for-profit prisons make their money?

Mr. HALLINAN: It's funny. They make their money, essentially, just like
hotels do. They build a prison. They figure out what it costs them per day
to supply the room and board, the food, the guards, the maids in essence,
everything you need to set up a hotel. And then they charge the state $49 to
$59 a day, just as you would pay for a Holiday Inn or a Motel 6 or something
like that. It's very, very similar.

GROSS: One of the prisons that you visited that you write about in your new
book you describe as a model for the private prison in America. This is the
Great Plains Correctional Facility in central Oklahoma. How would you
describe this prison?

Mr. HALLINAN: It was, of all the prisons I visited, I think, the--I don't
know if I want to say the best overall, but certainly it's what you'd hope for
in a prison, I think. If you were to take a tour, as I did, you would see
computers inside, where inmates can learn a variety of skills or learn how to
use Microsoft Word, programs like that. There were musical instruments they
could learn to play. The cells were clean and relatively spacious. The
atmosphere inside the prison was not particularly hostile, as it is in many
places, and the place seemed to run fairly well. And the town, which built
the prison as a speculative investment, loved it, did quite well, sold the
prison and now took the money from that and is building a golf course and
housing development.

GROSS: So how come there are musical instruments and computers?

Mr. HALLINAN: Largely to keep the inmates pacified. It's--every warden will
tell you--and this is the interesting thing about the debate that we've had
over the last five years or so with the so-called `get tough on crime'
mentality. You see a number of legislatures saying, `Take away the weights,
take away the TVs. Lock these inmates up. Give them nothing to do all day
because they deserve it, because they did very bad things.' It's true in many
cases, they did do very bad things, but what--ask any warden and ask any guard
and what they will tell you is that makes their job 10 times tougher, because
a grown man who's locked away for 24 hours a day who has no TV to watch, no
weights to lift, nothing to do with his time is an extremely dangerous person.
And the atmosphere inside the prisons becomes extremely hostile and people get
hurt.

GROSS: One of the points you make in your book, "Going Up the River," is that
prisons mean money now in a lot of places. If a prison comes to a town, then
more people will move there because there's more jobs, there'll be more
restaurants opening, more supermarkets, gas stations and so on. So, you know,
prisons are connected with money. There's also companies that are making
money by selling their products to prisons. One example is phone companies.
I guess, you know, you used to not be able to make many phone calls as a
prisoner, but now you say all prisons have this really big bank of pay phones.

Mr. HALLINAN: It's--yeah, it's amazing. The thing about a prison is it's
essentially a small town, a city, and it needs everything a city does. When
you open a prison, you need doctors, you need nurses, you need a guy to fix
the computer, you need somebody to haul the trash. You need all those things
a city needs. And so every time a prison opens, all these people get hired.
And, of course, inmates, to a degree, need the same things that you or I need.
They need toothpaste and deodorant and shampoo and they need to make phone
calls, and the phone companies in this country--AT&T, MCI WorldCom, folks like
that--were very quick to catch on to this. And in the early '90s, they began
approaching the prisons with profit-splitting deals where they would come to
the prison and say, `Hey, let us put in phones, and every time an inmate makes
a collect call home, you get 50 cents of the dollar, we get 50 cents of the
dollar.' And this became extremely big business for these companies.

GROSS: So did that change prison policy about how many phone calls an inmate
could make?

Mr. HALLINAN: Oh, absolutely. You would routinely in the, oh, '60s, '70s and
even in the '80s see prison policies where the phone was used as a reward, and
if an inmate behaved, he might get five minutes a week on the phone or five
minutes a month or maybe even only five minutes every 90 days. And the phone
was used as a reward for that behavior. But as soon as there was profit to be
made, the phone was no longer used as a reward. They were--it changed and
inmates were allowed to use the phone basically anytime they could. Anytime
they weren't working or weren't in school or in their cells, they're free to
get on the phones and talk as long as they like because the prison was making
money on it.

GROSS: You visited prisons around the country. You've observed prisoners
around the country. Do you worry a lot about what it will be like for these
prisoners when they're released back into the world outside and what it will
be like for the people who they're interacting with?

Mr. HALLINAN: I do, particularly for the inmates who are confined in the
so-called supermax prisons. In many cases, inmates who are assigned to these
prisons, as I said, will spend years in a solitary cell literally not much
bigger than a twin bed. And you will take an inmate like that and, in many
cases, he will be released straight onto the street at the end of his term.
He's not put in a medium-security prison and then a minimum-security prison
and slowly worked toward freedom. One day he's in a cell, five-by-seven. The
next day he's out in the free world. And I don't know about you or anybody
else, but the prospect of walking next to someone like that, sitting next to
someone like that, passing someone like that one the street, I think, is a
very frightening prospect, just to release people like that.

On the other hand, some prison systems--Iowa is one that's particularly
noteworthy, I think--have tried to encourage inmates to get jobs while they're
in prison with the for-profit sector, with real companies. And they do this
under one condition: that the companies that employ them, if the employees do
well, they offer them jobs when they get out. And they've had some success
with that.

I spoke with one woman who had been in prison for 16 months on a bad check
charge and she was 45 years old. And I asked her about this. She worked in a
plant where they basically packaged dry, powdered goods, something like
Kool-Aid and she made, I think, $7 1/2 to start. And she told me that she was
so incredibly grateful for this job because what it allowed her to do when she
got out of prison was to have a big enough savings account--I think she had
$1,800--that allowed her to put a deposit on an apartment and a down payment
on a car and a real small amount of money in a checking account and basically
allowed her to get on with her life. If she hadn't had that, you know, she
would have gotten--she would have received, I believe, $100 and a one-way bus
ticket and that would have been it. And that's precious little to start a
life over again.

GROSS: Joseph Hallinan, I want to thank you very much for talking with us.

Mr. HALLINAN: Oh, Terry, I appreciate it. Thank you very much.

GROSS: Joseph Hallinan is the author of "Going Up the River: Travels in a
Prison Nation."

Coming up, Ken Tucker reviews Ronny Elliott's new CD, "Poisonville." This is
FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Review: Ronny Elliott's new CD called "Poisonville"
TERRY GROSS, host:

Ronny Elliott has been making blues-influenced rock 'n' roll since the 1960s,
but he's never become a star. When rock critic Ken Tucker looked up Elliott's
resume on the Web, Elliott's biggest claim to fame seemed to be that he once
had a band called Your Local Beer(ph) that opened for Jimi Hendrix in 1967.
Nonetheless, Ken says Elliott's new CD, "Poisonville," is the sort of album
that defines an entire career.

(Soundbite of "Room 100")

Mr. RONNY ELLIOTT: (Singing) He woke up in a blood-soaked bed, struggled
through a mess in his mind, rubbed his eyes and staggered to his feet. He
prayed that he wasn't gonna find the pretty dagger from the Times Square Gyp
joint sticking from a gash in her side. He knew in his heart the light was
gone and he remembered what she said and he cried.

KEN TUCKER reporting:

His voice is a little like Johnny Cash without the gravitas. His songs are a
little like John Prine's, without the whimsy. Actually, some of them would
bring a smile to the face of rap star Eminem, like that song, "Room 100," in
which Ronny wakes up hung over in a motel, hoping he won't find, quote, "a
dagger sticking from a gash" in his girlfriend's thigh. But, of course, he
does.

Elliott, born in Birmingham, Alabama, is the kind of guy who allies himself
with people who go to extremes, who, in his words, `burn, burn, burn.' And he
says this knowing that, most of the time, the end result of such behavior is
to become a burnout.

(Soundbite of Ronny Elliott song)

Mr. ELLIOTT: (Singing) I only want to be with the ones who burn, burn, burn,
the ones in love with the night. They light up like a cigarette. I only want
to be with the ones who burn, burn, burn, the ones with fire in their soul,
little or nothing to forget. I'm wantin' romance and feeding the fire and
looking for poetry and searching for desire and praying to God and begging for
gin. I'm looking for goodness and living for sin.

TUCKER: Ronny Elliott stops his CD dead in the middle to pull off his most
audacious trick. He takes the year 1947, the year he was born, and makes the
argument that this was the year rock 'n' roll itself was born. Talk about
foolhardiness. But listen and see if you don't get sucked into his version of
history.

Mr. ELLIOTT: In 1947, Billboard still had a race record in country and
western charts. Hank Williams released his first record in January of that
year. Howlin' Wolf met Junior Parker in 1947 and they decided to start a
band. I was born in Birmingham, Alabama, in that year, same year that Wynonie
Harris signed a contract with King Records and Roy Brown either wrote or stole
"Good Rockin' Tonight," depending on who you talk to. He released it as a
record. And in Tupelo, Mississippi, a 12-year-old Elvis Aron Presley started
taking his guitar to school every day.

(Singing) Now the radio has gone to hell and Hank Williams has gone to heaven.
They ask you when rock 'n' roll was born, you tell them 1947.

TUCKER: Throughout this CD, Ronny Elliott sprinkles literary allusions,
ranging from Jack Kerouac to Vladimir Nabokov. But for once, this is a
singer-songwriter who earns his bookish ego and at no point more so than in
the title of his CD, "Poisonville," as he points out in his liner notes, a
phrase lifted from Dashiell Hammett, the original, hard-boiled novelist who,
like Elliott, worked a lot of different jobs and took a dim view of his fellow
man while maintaining a healthy streak of romanticism.

Commercial luck has always eluded Ronny Elliott. My favorite fact that I
learned reading about him on the Internet is that in 1966 the band he was in
at the time turned down a novelty song called "Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron" that
ended up selling millions for a less-picky hack group called the Royal
Guardsmen. Anyone who knows what a hunk of junk "Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron"
was will find Ronny Elliott and "Poisonville" all the more invigorating.

GROSS: Ken Tucker is critic at large for Entertainment Weekly. He reviewed
Ronny Elliott's new CD, "Poisonville."

FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our engineer is Audrey
Bentham(ph). Dorothy Ferebee is our administrative assistant. Roberta
Shorrock directs the show. I'm Terry Gross.

(Soundbite of Ronny Elliott song "Poisonville")

Mr. ELLIOTT: (Singing) I'm living in a state of mind, having fallen from a
state of grace. There's a long road behind me, a long road as far as I can
see. My compass and a road map are the lines in my brow and my palm. The
road that's straight is never the road that's free. I'm living in
Poisonville. Got no love, I guess I never will. I keep running and I'm
standing still right here in Poisonville.

I had a fire that burned in me, and I let that fire go out. I walked around
heaven, decided I could not stay.
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.