Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing

Newjack is a nonfiction book written by Ted Conover. Conover, a journalist, spends a year as a correction officer in Sing Sing Prison and keeps a detailed record of events in a spiral notebook. The story takes place largely at Sing Sing, a historic prison located in Ossining, New York. Sing Sing is a palimpsest of structures dating back to the 1800s: spread across fifty-five acres, the prison includes massive cell blocks, a solitary-housing unit, and the site of a former execution building: the death house. The construction of the prison complex is disorderly, the architecture is bleak, and the facilities in want of repair.

Setting out with the objective of providing a transparent account of prison from the perspective of a guard, Conover’s experience begins in the correction officer recruit academy, where he is immersed in a world saturated with masculine aggression and abuse. This mentality translates directly to the atmosphere within prison, where charged confrontations and violent retribution are commonplace. This is a far cry from previous reformist attempts to utilize the prison as a space for restoration and transformation, an endeavor led by Thomas Osborne, a former warden of Sing Sing whose tenure was short-lived.