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Acclaimed journalist Ted Conover sets a new standard for bold, in-depth reporting in this first-hand account of life inside the penal system.
When Conover’s request to shadow a recruit at the New York State Corrections Officer Academy was denied, he decided to apply for a job as a prison officer. So begins his odyssey at Sing Sing, once a model prison but now the state’s most troubled maximum-security facility. The result of his year there is this remarkable look at one of America’s most dangerous prisons, where drugs, gang wars, and sex are rampant, and where the line between violator and violated is often unclear. As sobering as it is suspenseful, Newjack is an indispensable contribution to the urgent debate about our country’s criminal justice system, and a consistently fascinating read.
- Sales Rank: #42808 in Books
- Brand: Conover, Ted
- Published on: 2001-06-12
- Released on: 2001-06-12
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.00" h x .70" w x 5.20" l, 1.15 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 352 pages
Amazon.com Review
Most people know it's easier to get into prison than it is to get out. But for a journalist, just getting into Sing Sing, New York's notorious maximum-security prison, isn't easy. In fact, Ted Conover was so stymied by official channels that he took the only way in--other than crime--and became a New York State corrections officer: "I wanted to hear the voices one truly never hears, the voices of guards--those on the front lines of our prison policies, the society's proxies." Newjack is Conover's account of nearly a year at ground zero of the criminal justice system. What it reveals is a mix of the obvious and the absurd, with hypocrisies not unexpected considering that the land of the free shares with Russia the distinction of having the world's largest prison population. As of December 1999, it was projected that the number of people incarcerated in the United States would reach 2 million in 2000.
This is the world Conover enters when he, along with other new recruits, undergoes seven weeks of pseudomilitary preparation at the Albany Training Academy. Then it's off to Sing Sing for the daily grind of prison life. Conover correctly and vividly captures the essence of that life, its tedium interspersed with the adrenaline rush of an "incident" and the edge of fear that accompanies every action. He also details how the guards experience their own feelings of confinement, often at the hands of the inmates: A consequence of putting men in cells and controlling their movements is that they can do almost nothing for themselves. For their various needs they are dependent on one person, their gallery officer. Instead of feeling like a big, tough guard, the gallery officer at the end of the day often feels like a waiter serving a hundred tables or like the mother of a nightmarishly large brood of sullen, dangerous, and demanding children. When grown men are infantilized, most don't take to it too nicely. And not taking to it nicely often involves violence. Indeed, the constant potential for violence on any scale makes even humdrum assignments dangerous. It's astonishing that more doesn't happen, given that the majority of the 1,800 inmates have been convicted of violent felonies: murder, manslaughter, rape, robbery, assault, kidnapping, burglary, arson. But beneath the simmering rage rests an unexpected sensitivity that Conover captures brilliantly. After encountering a Hispanic inmate with a tattoo of a heartbreaking passage from The Diary of Anne Frank on his back, he writes: "It was easier to stay incurious as an officer. Under the inmates' surface bluster, their cruelty and selfishness, was almost always something ineffably sad." Ultimately, the emphasis of Conover's work is on the toll prison exacts--most immediately on the jailed and their jailers, but also on a society that puts both there in increasing numbers. --Gwen Bloomsburg
From Publishers Weekly
In books like Rolling Nowhere (about hoboes) and Coyotes (about illegal aliens), Conover distinguished himself with brave, empathetic reporting. This riveting book goes further. Stymied by both the union and prison brass in his effort to report on correctional officers, Conover instead applied for a job, and spent nearly a year in the system, mostly at Sing Sing, the storied prison in the New York City suburbs. Fascinated and fearful, the author in training grasps some troubling truths: "we rule with the inmates' consent," says one instructor, while another acknowledges that "rehabilitation is not our job." As a Sing Sing "newjack" (or new guard), Conover learns the folly of going by the book; the best officers recognize "the inevitability of a kind of relationship" with inmates. Whether working the gallery, the mess hall or transportation detail, the job is both a personal and moral challenge: at the isolation unit ("the Box"), Conover begins to write up his first "use of force" incident when a fellow officer waves him away. He steps back to offer a history of the prison, the "hopelessly compromised" work of prison staff and the unspoken idealism he senses in fellow guards. Stressed by his double life and the demands of the job, caught between the warring impulses of anthropological inquiry and "the incuriosity that made the job easier," Conover struggles but nevertheless captures scenes of horror and grace. With its nuanced portraits of officers and inmates, the book never preaches, yet it conveys that we ignore our prisons--an explosive (and expensive) microcosm of race and class tensions--at our collective peril. Agent, Kathy Robbins. First serial to the New Yorker. (May)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Having already documented the lives of illegal aliens (Coyotes) and hoboes (Rolling Nowhere), journalist Conover gives a compelling firsthand account of life as a corrections officer. The site is Sing Sing, once widely known for housing the electric chair that killed 614 inmates but now unremarkable among New York State's prisons. Refused entry as a journalist, Conover actually attended the training academy and became a bona fide officer for a year. Once on the job, he appears to have identified completely with the persona of a prison guard: He feels his head swim as he tries to enforce rules that are routinely ignored to avoid confrontations. He braces himself to walk the galleries amid catcalls and threats of violence and tries to keep on top of the games inmates play. Given the monotony, dehumanization, and imminent dangers, why would anyone choose this profession? A good accompanying volume is Lucien X. Lombardo's Guards Imprisoned (1981. o.p.), which points out that, in areas of high unemployment, these are the most lucrative jobs requiring a minimal amount of education. Furthermore, some officersDnot allDcan wield a kind of power hard to emulate in the outside world. Highly recommended for public and academic libraries. [Excerpted in the New Yorker.DEd.]DFrances Sandiford, Green Haven Correctional Facility Lib., Stormville, N.
-DFrances Sandiford, Green Haven Correctional Facility Lib., Stormville, NY
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Most helpful customer reviews
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
Who's In Charge Here?
By Bucherwurm
Ted Conover is a reporter who, without the knowledge of his employer, went through the training academy, and then spent close to a year as a guard at Sing Sing - but please don't call them guards to their faces; they are Corrections Officers (CO).
In our every day society we meet all types of people. Human psychology is such that we all have to have someone to look down on. We simply have to be better than many of the other folks in our world. We look down on liberals, or conservatives. We feel superior to our bosses, or gays, minorities, atheists, or trailer trash. Surely somebody doesn't cut it as well as we do. In prison there are only two classes of people: guards and those who are guarded. And each class finds the other group inferior. Wait a minute. I should have said there are three classes. Senior COs also look down on junior officers.
Prisoner abuse? That doesn't appear to happen too often. What about guard abuse? Surprisingly the COs seem to be the subject of nearly constant harassment by the prisoners. The prisoners, having time on their hands, love to confront COs, and shower them with epithets. And, as I mentioned earlier, Senior COs harass guards who are one step lower than they are.
What are the rewards of such a job? As far as I can determine there are none whatsoever. The pay is not good. Most of those around you hate you, or at best tolerate you, and never expect someone to say that you are doing good work. The rules are applied so ambiguously and inconsistently that you are constantly frustrated. The fear also never seems to go away. Sometimes the pent up stress is relieved in physical contact between prisoners and their keepers (generally initiated by the prisoners). Maybe even that's not all bad. Better, perhaps than going home and beating up the wife, and kicking the dog.
This is a very interesting book, and while the author does not really get into the heads of the COs and the felons, it is a tale not often heard.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
A Must Read
By Flyingnurse
I had the honor of meeting Ted Conover during a lecture to my American Civilization class. Fortunately, our professor is a longtime friend of Ted's and was able to convince him to speak to our class during his book tour for "Newjack."
The first thing you notice is how slight he is. Ted Conover is probably 5'8" and weighs around 160 pounds. Hardly the image of a big, tough correctional officer. He is also exceptionally articulate, able to express thoughts, feelings and impressions better than anyone I have ever listened to. Having met him before reading "Newjack" was a rare pleasure because it added a context to the book that most readers never get.
"Newjack" is as much about Ted as it is about prison. It is about how a self professed liberal is changed by his surroundings. It is about a man's journey into his inner self. It is about a man confronting the fear and predudice that resides in all of us, and trying to come to terms with it.
It is also about the American justice system (good and bad) and those on each side of the bars. If you don't read this book you are missing a rare opportunity to glimpse inside the deep underbelly of the American Experiment.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Bits and Pieces
By Joseph S. Walker
Conover is a talented writer, and many of the individual chapters here are wonderful. Incorporating the history of Sing Sing--and, to an extent, of American jails in general--into his present-day depiction of the prison is a nice touch. The book should be read by anyone interested in how our recent mania for incarceration is affecting society.
If anything is missing here, it's a sense of an overall framework or development to the story. Individual vignettes are often powerful, but we rarely get any sense of where they fit into Conover's year as a guard or what part they play in his changing attitudes and ideas. This may be a necessary evil resulting from the grind of endlessly repetitious eight hour shifts, but for me it keeps the book from five stars.
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