- Library Binding: 331 pages
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1439559856
- ISBN-13: 978-1439559857
- Product Dimensions: 20.1 x 13 x 2.5 cm
- Shipping Weight: 159 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (92 customer reviews)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
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 --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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First Sentence
Six-twenty A.M. and the sun rises over a dark place. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt
Six-twenty A.M. and the sun rises over a dark place. Read the first page
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Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars
Newjack lacks a point,
By A Customer
This review is from: Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing (Paperback)
Several friends and I read Newjack in our bookclub. Ted Conover started the book well. He has an interesting idea of getting an inside look at the New York prison system. Mr. Conover goes in to this assignment giving the impression that he feels the system is broken and corrupt. As the story continues, it provides an interesting case study on how Conover's feelings about inmates and the prison system changes. However, I was greatly dissapointed to come to the end of the work, only to find that Mr. Conover never looked at himself and how the job changed his attitudes and beliefs. After starting out strong, the book is reduced from an expose' to mearly a collection of "war stories". Mr. Conover fails to try and give reasons to why things happen or how the prison system could be improved. Most importently, Mr. Conover never looks at the changes that occurred in him. A chapter or two at the end of the book, analysing his own change would have given the book meaning and significants. As it was, the book falls flat on it's face. If you are interested in a story of the underbelly of our society as represented in the prison system, this is a good book for you. However, if you were looking for undercover journalism that exposes the many problems in the prison system and then attempts to bring meaning or change, you will be greatly dissapointed. Mr. Conover's book ends up being nothing but a ... compilation of gross stories with no meaning.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Wow!,
By A Customer
This review is from: Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing (Paperback)
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.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hits the nail on the head,
By ANDY PERHACH (PITTSBURGH, PA United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing (Paperback)
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.
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