Lois 's Reviews > Freeman's Challenge: The Murder That Shook America's Original Prison for Profit

This audiobook was made available for me to listen to and review by Robin Bernstein, Brilliance Audio and NetGalley.

The narrator of this nonfiction history is Shamaan Casey. The narrator added emotion and depth to this sometimes harrowing narrative.

This tackles the unsavory history of the first for profit prison system in the USA. I, like many others, tied for profit prisons to the chain gang system practiced in the post Antebellum south. Slavery by Another Name by Douglas A. Blackmon focuses on the history of incarceration in the south after the fall of the Confederacy. I honestly thought that system was created at that time. I did not realize it was actually a continuation of the Auburn system of for profit prison exploitation. In the early 1800's prisons in the USA in the north were largely run using a Quaker model of solitary confinement known as the Pennsylvania system. Today we understand this system to be torture but at the time it was thought to allow offenders a place of quiet reflection. This system was focused on the idea of Christian based rehabilitation. Labor was part of this system but it was largely for the purpose of rehabilitation. Prison workers often labored for the prison and their own care.
The Auburn system, on the other hand, wasn't concerned with prisoners or rehabilitation, its primary concern was profit. This system basically used solitary confinement to prevent the prison laborers from speaking with the free hired laborers. The prisoners are forced to wear the striped prison uniforms today understood as prison uniforms. To keep prisoners in check and force productivity from them, brutal violence was employed via whipping primarily and water torture known as a shower bath.
The prison system is explained thoroughly to assist the reader with understanding the situation that William Freeman ultimately rebelled against. William Freeman is 15 when he's sent to Auburn for horse thievery which Freeman insisted was untrue. At the prison he loudly complained about not getting paid for his labors. This led to discipline which left him without hearing in one ear and other possible brain damage. William is also tortured in a device known as a shower bath. After this he's deeply not okay and begins to attack other prisons for small or perceived slights. Serving five years, William was released and left with his brother in law. William is most likely suffering from complex PTSD and a closed head injury. He struggles to read, when he was easily able to before incarceration. Furthermore William is incensed at his stolen labor and stolen time. He maintained that he was innocent of all charges and had been badly used. William later murderers a white family in retaliation for his suffering and it caused condemnation of the Auburn system.
This was a fascinating if a bit harrowing read. I learned quite a bit early US prisons and how choices made at this time led directly to today's prison crisis. I am an abolitionists so this was deeply impact full.

Thank you to Robin Bernstein, Brilliance Audio and NetGalley for the opportunity to listen to and review this audiobook. All opinions and viewpoints expressed in this review are my own.