Newjack : Guarding Sing Sing

Rating:
Summary: Doing Time at Sing Sing...
Review: A person needs to have a certain determination to do what author Ted Conover did: take a year out from one's life to go undercover and put one's neck on the line, literally.

Investigative journalist Conover took a big risk - his career, his family life, and even his life - to get the scoop on what life is like inside New York State's infamous Sing-Sing Prison... from a Correctional Officer's point of view. It makes for a most fascinating read.

Ted had tried the traditional route to get inside and have a look at life from behind bars, his target being the notorious Sing-Sing Penetentiary. However, he soon discovered that the media is not a welcome bunch and the stalwart institution (like all other max-security prisons throughout the country) makes sure that the press never get inside to have a peek. Not one to give up easily (and smelling a real story), Conover came up with the plan to go in undercover, as it were, as a legitimate, bona-fide, State-trained Correctional Officer.

And that is just what he did.

He went the route of CO training - a boot camp of sorts, a rough ride indeed - finding it very demanding and obtuse. Still, he persevered to the end, graduated, and waited for his call-up. He didn't have to wait long. The turnover rate of COs is high, and the inaugural training ground for almost all COs in the State of New York is the infamous prison he was targeting.

The book, NewJack: Guarding Sing Sing is the chronicle of Conover's year (he dedicated an entire year to experience the fulness of the prison experience) as a CO at the institution. The contents of the book are, in many ways, not surprising. Life is hard behind bars, for inmates and COs alike. There is a palpable aggression, a frustration at the procedures, and the interaction between inmate and prison guard (errrr, sorry, correctional officer), inmate and inmate, and CO and CO is perpetually tense and suspicious.

Those who are crime or psychology buffs will dig their teeth into this read and come away satisfied. Conover has done an outstanding job of revealing what everyday life - on the job and in the cell - is all about at Sing Sing. He gives wonderful description of the compound itself and what living conditions are really like inside. His historical account of the raising and implementing of the prision is, in itself, worth buying the book.

As well, he's done a great job on revealing the personality of Sing Sing - from the inception of the place right up to present day. It's an institution that has a rich and varied history, if not pristine and stellar. Sing Sing is a bastion of punishment, not all of it good or right or noble, and Conover has documented and presented such with a pretty fair stroke of the pen.

Though I found his commentary on the prison population a little heavy-handed and hyperbolic on occasion, I'm sure that couldn't be helped when the man was laying his life on the line everyday, going in to control the masses. He did, however, paint a fair picture of the life of a CO on the inside and outside. It's a hard job, and it has hard men and women occupying it.

And Conover made it to the end of the year. He survived the job, in all its quirks, and has given the rest of us on the outside a very rare glimpse at what life is like on the inside. And what a unique perspective it is, too.

I recommend this book to one and all who want to explore penology from a more relaxed, less academic, view and accounting. Great read, start to finish.

Rating:
Summary: Wow!
Review: I can't believe these guys (corrections officers) put up with the stuff they do. It takes nerves of steel to work in a place like that. The book was very entertaining. At times I could not put it down. Also recommended : Nine-o Adam, Another Day in Paradise, Junky, Slaughter House Five.

Rating:
Summary: truth and poetry from inside a prison
Review: I have worked in the mental health system for 18 years and the similarities in structure and control that I saw in reading this book give me a new perspective on incarceration. Taking the gleam off my sunny approach to work inside a locked facility I see so much more clearly how the keys define my realtionship to the patients, no matter how natural those relationships seem to be.
Another review made me wonder if this book was going to leave me hanging with no insight into how this experience affected Conover. The way that Conover gently leads the reader away from the violence, starting with a tattoo in Spanish and ending with New Year's eve is magnificent, bittersweet and anything but artless.
I read the book in two days. Buy it. Support this author's hard won work, and learn about the darker side of human behavior.

Rating:
Summary: This "Sing Sing" ex-resident approves
Review: I lived in Ossining, New York from 1970 to 1994 and can say that most of the village's residents have little or nothing to do with Sing Sing Prison, which lies at the southern edge of town. Tucked away off the main drags of Route 9 and Spring Street with no sign pointing the way, and only entirely visible from a boat on the Hudson, it is even hard to find. The only times most residents are reminded of its presence are during hot summer nights when corrections officers' PA announcements can be heard clearly as far as 2 miles away.

And after reading this book I don't think the prison or the community will be "reaching out to each other" any time soon. Sing Sing's administration has more than enough to worry about within its own walls.

There are a lot of great lines in this book, my favorite being something like "The longer I worked there the easier it was for me to believe that anyone, anywhere, could be guilty of any conceivable crime." Conover also punctures one of society's most cherished myths about maximum security prison life--I won't reveal it, but you can probably guess which one it is.

Rating:
Summary: Insight Of A Prison "Hack"
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed "New Jack" and recommend it to anyone. The unique detail of this book is that it gives insight to not only a prison guard but a new one. The lack of training that he got really startled me but it should not of. Although being an inmate would be hell, being a guard is almost just is bad, in that you are incarcerated mentally even though one can leave at the end of the day.

The book is not a critique of the penal system but more a guide to what happens on a day to day basis. Conover the writer explores the madness and monontiny (sp?) that goes on, yet while he still had to be Conover the guard. He spares no grimy detail like extracting a prisoner yet does not dramatize or liberty with the facts.

I can't imagine being a guard myself, and the writer asks that same question. Pick up this title.

Rating:
Summary: Newjack lacks a point
Review: Ted Conover's brilliantly insightful guide to a year in the life of a corrections officer at Sing Sing prison truly deserves the accolades it has received. I was curious as to what prison life is like as viewed from 'the other side', and, as Conover reveals, the officers are as much 'prisoners' (albeit of a different kind) as those they guard. The stress levels are revealed to be almost unbearable - C.O.s face the threat of violence every day - prisons are understaffed, and the high turn over rate, at Sing Sing in particular, means that inexperienced officers, otherwise known as 'newjacks' must make difficult decisions on the spur of the moment.

Conover's honesty is to be applauded - he is sympathetic to those officers who are truly just there to earn a living, and reserves his scorn for those sadistic officers who get a kick out of what has to be one of the worst jobs on the planet. Conover's sympathies also lie with certain prisoners - although his initital liberalism upon entering Sing Sing has most definitely been tempered by the end of his stint.

'Newjack' is a brilliantly written, thoroughly depressing and utterly essential book, that raises more questions than it answers - a truly thought-provoking work.

Rating:
Summary: Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing
Review: Ted Conover's interest in the NY State Correction Officer's training program led him to spend a year working as a CO at Sing Sing Prison. Unencumbered by polemical fervor, the resulting book is honest, graceful, and infused with respect toward nearly everyone on both sides of the bars. The inmates are depicted with sympathy while not ignoring their initial crimes and menacing behavior in prison; the officers are presented as individuals performing a dangerous job without discounting their questionable acts. The prison administration is the only side cast in a uniformly negative light, with its shortcomings detailed without a discussion of its limited resources and bureaucratic constraints. When the author eventually states his own suggestions for reform they come without moralistic rhetoric of any sort, appealing to intellect instead of inflaming emotions.

The informative, straightforward narrative is improved with engrossing historical background on the origins and evolution of Sing Sing, often drawn from nineteenth-century sources. There is also a very interesting epilogue about the response to the first edition.

Rating:
Summary: Hard Life
Review: Ted Conover's Newjack is one of the best book I ever read. It shows how prison is from the CO's eyes. Newjack opened my eyes; how tough it is to be a CO. Not only the prisoners have a hard time in prison, the COs have a hard time. They are forced to make some difficult choices, and if they choice the wrong one they might cause a riot.

Conover shines light in a dark place for me to see how prison really is. This book is ten times better than any prison movie. The movies will always show the story from the prisoners side, but Conover tells stories about CO's getting beat up, and getting held as a prisoner themselves, but the prisons.

I sincerly think that this book should be read by anybody who really wants to know about life in prison.

Rating:
Summary: New Jack, Guarding Sing Sing
Review: This book gives you a real insite as to not only what the inmates go thru but also what the officers and their families contend with on a daily bases. I think it is a great way to get an idea of what really happens behind bars.

Rating:
Summary: Wow!
Review: This book is awesome. I worked in the corrections field for three years, and reading the author's experiences at the training academy and then as he started work at Sing Sing brought back a lot of memories. Sing Sing sounds like a real hell on earth from the author's descriptions, and that applies to most prisons, places where hope doesn't exist. Very well written and very accurate portrayal of what correctional officers go through on a daily basis. Very highly recommended to anyone wondering what it's like to work in, or to be incarcerated in, a prison.