Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing

On Conversion Day, Officer Luther tells the recruits: “You’re the zookeeper now [...] Go run the zoo” (94). Throughout the text, Conover himself often uses words that are evocative of animals or barbarism when speaking of the inmates: Conover describes the inmates as “swarming” (11), or how “The pictures of the mob reminded me of news footage from some besieged African capital” (53), or even how inmate Hans Toussaint is “not unlike an ambassador from a small, fierce, and backward land” (168). This imagery reinforces the dehumanization and otherization of the inmates, who are described as scum, savages, or the worst of the worst. Conover constantly enhances the difference between the prison guards and the inmates, depicting Us versus Them in stark terms.