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An eye opening, socially relevant work.

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It has been said that good writers must suffer for their craft. But few would have voluntarily gone to the lengths Ted Conover went to in order to gather information for this important, informative book. Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing chronicles the author's experiences as he worked incognito for a year as a rookie corrections officer at world famous Sing Sing, one of New York State's maximum security prisons.
Conover calmly tells it like it is in the little seen but ever expanding world of corrections. He describes the soul sapping indignities that officers and inmates alike contend with on a day to day basis, bringing to life a hidden world that few outsiders will ever see or even want to think about.
For an informed, nonsensationalistic look at modern day prisons and the men and women who guard them, Newjack by Ted Conover is without equal. Highly recommended.

NewJack

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Average prose, a real cure for insomnia with some interestging tidbits. It's a book I now own that will forever collect dust.

An Engaging Narrative and a Classic on Our Failed Prison System

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Awarded a 2001 National Book Award and selected as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Newjack Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing has become a sociological classic, a gritty, eyewitness account of the escalating tragedy afflicting the American penal system. As a journalist-turned undercover prison guard, Conover demonstrates the sweeping irony of a prison system that has engulfed certain minorities on such a massive scale that prison culture has influenced popular culture through trappings such as baggy, beltless, low-slung pants or laceless sneakers, all with a pervasiveness that reflects a dark reality: "Prison has unwittingly given rise to its own empowering culture," observes Conover, "...one that keeps inmates resentful and resistant to incarceration's `reformative' goals...."

The failure of prison to reform its inmates not only fails the incarcerated, observes the author in this hard-hitting narrative, but our entire society, which pays millions of dollars each year to warehouse dysfunctional human beings and must face the broken families they leave behind, in a vicious cycle that expands exponentially with each new generation.

A string of powerful and insightful anecdotes portraying the wastefulness of inmate life and the struggle of both guards and prisoners to maintain their humanity in an inhuman environment buttresses the author's point: Investing in preventative measures to strengthen families and communities would reduce childhood trauma, provide hope, and avert the far higher societal and financial costs of rampant violent crime. In sum, Newjack offers a suspenseful, cinema noir style that engages the reader while conveying a bleak, cautionary vision, one that we ignore at our own peril.

Nothing New

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While on the surface, the idea of Conover immersing himself into the NY maximum security prison system as a corrections officer (CO) seemed to be a recipe for an exciting book, Newjack did not live up to its hype. Somewhere in the book it was mentioned that to become a mature CO, 4-5 years of work experience is necessary. Consequently, the one year Conover spent in New York's Sing Sing maximum security prison was hardly enough time to learn and build the kind of relationships necessary for a thoughtful and entertaining book. Instead, the parts of the book I found to be the most interesting were the historical accounts of who had the most influence in how the U.S. and NY prison systems evolved.

Unfortunately, there wasn't a lot of new ground covered through Conover's personal experience during guard training or in Sing Sing. The old clichés of prison guards as mean SOBs and apathetic prisoners beyond rehabilitation were reinforced.

I commend Conover's dedication to compiling material from firsthand experience, but Newjack was mildly entertaining and even less educational in terms of observations of inmate behavior, or new ideas in improving the system. Newjack would have had richer content had Mr. Conover been allowed to shadow an experienced CO as he set out to do initally, but was denied.

Conover's Best

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Chameleon journalist Ted Conover trains as a prison guard and works in Sing Sing, giving readers an intense look into prison life and the dynamics of the guards and guarded.

Intense, intensely personal, and full of insight into the prison system itself.

Best part is his history of the US penitentiary system, which most of us don't study in US History classes! Highly readable, well-researched section that should be of interest to all US citizens.

An incredible journey, a well-written account.