Pubdate: Thu, 07 May 2015
Source: Sacramento News & Review (CA)
Copyright: 2015 Chico Community Publishing, Inc.
Contact:  http://newsreview.com/sacto/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/540
Author: Raheem F. Hosseini

SCOTT THOMAS ANDERSON, JOURNALIST

Author Scott Thomas Anderson's new book explores America's appetite 
for incarceration

Journalist Scott Thomas Anderson has stuck his trickiest deadline 
yet. The author, hard-news evangelist and former SN&R colleague spent 
the past three years researching and writing his second nonfiction 
book, The Cutting Four-Piece: Crime and Tragedy in an Era of Prison 
Overcrowding, a tough work of long-form journalism that pries open 
the iron gates on America's penitentiary binge. The book is his 
second stab at crime-centric literary journalism, following his book 
Shadow People: How Meth-Driven Crime is Eating at the Heart of Rural 
America. Both books are bruising examinations of a society failing 
both victims and addicts. But his latest also contains a love letter 
to a profession in flux, particularly small-town reporters who 
out-hustled their big-market colleagues in illustrating how 
California's prison realignment experiment warped their communities. 
Over pints of hard cider and IPA, Anderson explains the origins of 
our prison crisis, why he hopes his work resonates with convicts and 
what he learned from SN&R's most notorious writer.

Congrats on the book's release. Is it a relief to have this out there?

It feels like the biggest relief I've ever experienced. (Laughs.) ... 
I've never attempted anything this complex before.

What was it about the topic of prison overcrowding that caught your eye?

I felt kind of obligated to do it, because I had done the first book, 
Shadow People, and I did talks all over California for that book. 
About two years into those talks ... what I found out was that it 
left people with as many questions as it answered for them, as a work 
of journalism. ... A lot of people just told me they wanted to 
understand more about the cultures of hopelessness that breed the 
addiction and how it plays out in the justice system itself.

Are the root causes of that punitive justice system being addressed?

The book actually has two different chapters that deal with the 
history of mandatory-minimum sentencing. There's no way to have a 
serious piece of journalism about prison overcrowding and how prison 
overcrowding flows onto the streets [and] the cycles of crime and 
victimization without looking at where prison overcrowding comes 
from. Mandatory-minimums are the main place it comes from. That and a 
complete lack of checks and balances within the drug war. ... Because 
what I say in the book is, addiction is a malignancy of the human 
spirit. Wars are fought with force of arms. One can't defeat the other.

You militarized a response to a health crisis, essentially.

I think that's true of the drug war. ... Most narcotics detectives I 
know ... don't think they're fighting a war. If they thought they're 
fighting a war, they'd probably quit because most of them are 
cerebral enough to know they're losing.

Where did the title, The Cutting Four-Piece, come from?

A four-piece is prison lingo for ankle bracelets and handcuffs that 
are connected with a center chain. ... A couple of really opinionated 
people told me it's a bad title. But the fact that every addict and 
convict I know and am in communication with loves it, I think makes 
it a good title.

Know your audience.

I care more about what they think about the content than your general 
reader, because the general reader doesn't know one way or another 
whether I'm full of shit or a good reporter. But the people who know 
are the addicts and convicts and cops and prosecutors and defense 
attorneys and judges. They're the ones who know whether it's real or 
not. Everybody else is just making a decision of whether they're 
going to follow along or not.

You raised about $3,600 through Kickstarter. What did that money buy?

The Kickstarter money is going to allow me to get at least 300 free 
copies to different community foundations in California.

Are we becoming click-bait drones? Is that where this is going?

The retreat of investigative journalism from one end of California to 
the other is completely disturbing to me. If the newspaper industry 
was in the shape it was eight or nine years ago, I don't even think 
this book would be necessary, to be honest with you. ... I just knew 
that some of these stories were never going to get told any other way.

This makes two pretty heavy books in terms of subject. Does it make 
you want to do a book on cupcakes and puppies?

No, but it's really made me appreciate other forms of journalism 
more. Now, as a news director for my company ... I noticed 
unconsciously I'm taking a lot of the great food and wine 
assignments. (Laughs.)

Seeing as we're both former SN&R interns, I've got to ask: Do you 
have any horror stories?

I actually loved my internship at SN&R. I doubt this will make print, 
but I learned a lot from [former staff writer] R.V. Scheide. 
(Laughs.) No matter what becomes of him in this world, I owe a debt 
of gratitude to him. If his car was broken down in another state and 
he could somehow contact me, I'd probably go use my AAA to help him out.
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