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Amazon.co.uk Review
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, and 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 an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
" [Conover] has made us fully part of his experience... . It is hard to imagine any journalist doing this more daringly or effectively." - "The New York Times
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" A timely, troubling, important book." - "The Baltimore Sun
"" Newjack is a graphic and troubling window into society's scrapheap. Conover is to be commended for having the chops to venture where few others would dare go.... An important cautionary tale." - "Los Angeles Times Book Review
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" Newjack tells the straight skinny on a guard's life inside prison without being overly judgmental or cloyingly sentimental. It's experimental journalism at its best." - "The Denver Post"
" A devastating chronicle of the toll prison takes on the prisoners and the keepers of the keys." - "Minneapolis Star Tribune"
" An incisive and indelible look at the life of a corrections officer and the dark life of the penal system." - "The Dallas Morning News"
" A fascinating story.... Prison books crowd the shelves, but few tell the story from the point of view of the officers who spend eight hours a day doing time, hoping and praying that they make it home that night, hoping and praying that the job allows them to remain human." - "The San Diego Union-Tribune"
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Customer Reviews
This is the core message journalist Ted Conover and his class mates receive when they enter the prison guards' boot camp in New York. Most of the recruits have applied for a job to gain job security, while Ted Conover has found this line of approach the only way he can do research on life in prison in New York State. It is fortunate for the rest of us that the Department of Correctional Services tried to get in Ted Conover' way, because his experience as prison guard - sorry; correctional officer - gives us a much broader view of life in prison than any book by an inmate.
This thorough and extraordinary book is full of ironies and cases of Orwellian newspeak, but what is most fascinating is Ted Connor's critical view of himself, his reactions and his fast dehumanization in Sing Sing, together with his description of the complex prison sociology. When you have read his detailed and vivid descriptions of his working days in Sing Sing you will find it easy to understand how even the most idealistic COs get fed up with inmates in general, lose their initiative and start to focus on how to survive each work day rather than on resocializing inmates.
This book is a must for anybody who takes an interest in prevention of crime or in hierarchial subcultures. It is a great pity that it is already hard to come by.
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.
Newjack not only gives you the typical prison stories, but in it Conover relays the subtle things that escape the attention of those who have never worked inside a prison. Conover address the different assignments given to COs often causing them to be outnumbered in massive amounts. He covers overcrowding, prison violence, dirty guards, and even the emotional tolls of the job.
This book holds interest like no other work of nonfiction before it. Conover should be applauded for this book. It is a hallmark of investigative journalism. As a result I have picked up a copy of his book COYOTES and cant wait to start it. A solid five star book that is a must read for nonfiction and true crime fans.
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