I bought a prison in the United States.

Four days later, the Tulsa World published its second follow-up report.

This time it wasn't on the front page, it was on the third page, but it was quite large, taking up an entire page.

The title is:

"After the rectification notice: A quiet week at McLean Prison".

Gloria posted three photos, one of which was a panoramic view of prisoners lined up neatly to operate the stamping machines in the factory.

One photo shows Rickreg and Omar discussing circuit boards in the technical research and development team's storage room.

The last picture is a detailed photo of the points ranking and confession column on the prison cell bulletin board.

In the same week, The Oklahoma City Daily published an in-depth interview that took up two full pages.

Their reporter spent a week in the prison, interviewing 32 inmates, four prison guards, Mrs. Martha, and a driver from Peterson Equipment Rental who happened to be delivering goods.

This report is more restrained in tone than Gloria's, but the conclusion is the same:

This prison is strictly managed and orderly, a rare positive example in the private prison industry!

Besides these two major newspapers, a number of smaller media outlets also jumped on the bandwagon and reported on the story.

What made Hammond most uneasy was the article in the Tulsa Tribune.

That newspaper was known for its sharp criticism; it never followed the crowd and always preferred to contradict others.

Their reporter wrote the following paragraph at the beginning of the article:

"If you think private prisons are all like those in the movies—corrupted guards, inmate riots, and the hallways reeking of urine…"

"Then you should go and see the McLean County Correctional Center; the inmates there might change your mind."

The article quoted a prisoner.

The prisoner was put in solitary confinement for damaging surveillance equipment. When the reporter interviewed him through the iron bars, he asked him:

Do you resent this prison? Do you resent the warden who locked you up?

The reporter originally intended to record some of the prisoners' extreme remarks in the newspaper, since he believed that the prisoners must have grievances against the prison.

But the prisoner's answer left him stunned for a long time.

The man in his thirties had tattoos on his arms and scars on his face; he was clearly not a good person. But his expression was like that of a believer confessing in church.

他 说:

"The biggest mistake I ever made in my life was not going to jail for robbery, but that I destroyed the surveillance cameras that the warden had bought while I was in prison."

"I did it. Every night before I go to sleep, I think about how I could have done something like that!"

"I've made up my mind. Once I get out of here, I'll do everything in my power to make amends!"

"I don't know how to make up for it, but I will find a way."

"I don't resent this place. On the contrary, I'm grateful that it made me realize what it means to be human and that I used to be a bastard."

"I thank that warden for correcting my mistake. He is the person I am most grateful to in my life, and he is the one who can be my godfather."

The reporter's mouth dropped open, wondering if he had misheard or if he had just interviewed a lunatic.

But he later interviewed more than a dozen other prisoners who were in solitary confinement for participating in sabotage.

To his surprise, no one defended him.

No one said, "I was wronged" or "I was just following someone else."

They all recounted their crimes in an almost pious tone.

Everyone felt that they truly deserved to be locked up here, and that they had let the warden down.

The reporter felt their worldview had been washed away, and concluded the article with a comment:

"I've been working in the judicial field for twelve years, and I've never encountered anything like this before."

"It's not hard to hear the words 'I was wrong' in prison; what's hard is believing that they mean it after you hear them."

"The inmates at McLean Prison were genuinely apologizing; their expressions reminded me of the confessions I heard in church as a child."

"I'm not saying this prison has turned into a church and the warden into a priest, but the eyes of those prisoners don't lie."

Hammond spread the three newspapers out on his desk, read them twice from beginning to end, then crumpled them up and threw them into the wastebasket.

The wastebasket was too small; three crumpled pieces of paper couldn't fit inside, and two rolled onto the floor.

"That's impossible!"

He sat in the leather chair, staring at the crumpled paper on the floor, his voice squeezed out from between his teeth.

He has already used all the connections he has cultivated in the political arena over the past twenty years.

Three rectification notices, one bank demand letter, one phone call to bribe Montes, plus inciting at least seven or eight inmates to cause trouble in the prison.

This is a combined approach, attacking simultaneously from three fronts: administration, finance, and internal operations.

No matter which front is breached, Ringo's prison will descend into chaos!

This is a tried-and-true method he has used for the past twenty years to deal with disobedient contractors, uncooperative businessmen, and outsiders who don't play by the rules.

It always works; every time, the other party gives in within three months.

But this time, it didn't work!

An immigrant Chinese, with no roots, no connections, and even an accent in his English, in this county.

He managed to catch all the punches within a week.

Fire safety rectification?

He couldn't change the width of the corridor, but he obtained a temporary injunction from the federal court.

That piece of paper now lies in Ringo's drawer, like a shield, blocking all subsequent actions from the county fire department.

Sanitation improvement?

He ordered the factory to shut down for half a day and had all the prisoners conduct a thorough cleaning of every corner of the prison.

The next time the health bureau sent people to inspect, they couldn't find a single cockroach, and the windows were all wiped clean.

Internal sabotage?

The bribed prisoners were arrested one by one, like pulling up radishes. Each one wrote a confession and put their fingerprint on it.

Moreover, after being arrested, they all told reporters with sincere expressions:

"I was wrong."

It's not admitting defeat, it's being wrong.

Hammond understood the difference between the two words better than anyone else.

His gaze fell on the photo in the confession section of the newspaper.

The bulletin board was covered with handwritten confessions, each with a different handwriting; some were so illegible they looked like scribbles, while others were as neat as a scholar's.

There were more than thirty portions.

Thirty-odd prisoners were incited to cause trouble at the same time, but none of them managed to escape.

No one had any obvious injuries, except for red marks on their wrists from the handcuffs.

The infirmary records show that no prisoners injured in fights have come for treatment.

This means that these prisoners offered almost no resistance during the process of being apprehended.

Hammond couldn't understand it.

He had seen prisoners beaten into submission, their eyes glazed over, their faces bruised and swollen, huddled in the corner, trembling.

They yielded out of fear, worried that the next punch would come down at any moment.

But the prisoners in the photos didn't have unfocused eyes; they had bright eyes, even something Hammond had never seen in court.

sincere.

This is a quality you wouldn't find in a hundred people in America.

If they weren't beaten into submission, then they were persuaded.

This fact failed to convince Hammond, but he could not find a more reasonable answer.