Rating: 
Summary: Wow!
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: New Jack, Guarding Sing Sing
Review: This book gives you a real insite as to not only what the inmates go thru but also what the officers and their families contend with on a daily bases. I think it is a great way to get an idea of what really happens behind bars.
Rating: 
Summary: Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing
Review: Ted Conover's interest in the NY State Correction Officer's training program led him to spend a year working as a CO at Sing Sing Prison. Unencumbered by polemical fervor, the resulting book is honest, graceful, and infused with respect toward nearly everyone on both sides of the bars. The inmates are depicted with sympathy while not ignoring their initial crimes and menacing behavior in prison; the officers are presented as individuals performing a dangerous job without discounting their questionable acts. The prison administration is the only side cast in a uniformly negative light, with its shortcomings detailed without a discussion of its limited resources and bureaucratic constraints. When the author eventually states his own suggestions for reform they come without moralistic rhetoric of any sort, appealing to intellect instead of inflaming emotions.The informative, straightforward narrative is improved with engrossing historical background on the origins and evolution of Sing Sing, often drawn from nineteenth-century sources. There is also a very interesting epilogue about the response to the first edition.
Rating:
Summary: Hard Life
Review: Ted Conover's Newjack is one of the best book I ever read. It shows how prison is from the CO's eyes. Newjack opened my eyes; how tough it is to be a CO. Not only the prisoners have a hard time in prison, the COs have a hard time. They are forced to make some difficult choices, and if they choice the wrong one they might cause a riot. Conover shines light in a dark place for me to see how prison really is. This book is ten times better than any prison movie. The movies will always show the story from the prisoners side, but Conover tells stories about CO's getting beat up, and getting held as a prisoner themselves, but the prisons. I sincerly think that this book should be read by anybody who really wants to know about life in prison.
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