Rating: 
Summary: Writer in a cage, with a club and a gun
Review: Ted Conover is a traveler, an explorer, a "participant anthropologist." His chosen profession is to take extended journeys to strange lands, and then write about his experiences for the rest of us. What a great job. For his first book he road the rails with men once quaintly known as hoboes. He traveled on another kind of railroad, this one underground, to tell the stories of illegal immigrants. Then he drove a taxi in Aspen, Colo., to write about the working-class reality behind the glitz. This time he spent a year at the New York prison called Sing Sing, a rock-hard warehouse of human beings held against their will. Most prison stories are told from the point of view of the inmates, but Conover (wisely, for his sake) decided to tell the story from the point of view of the guards. After his request to visit the prison as a writer was rejected, he was accepted into the Albany Training Academy and graduated as a "newjack," a rookie officer of the Department of Correctional Services, assigned to Sing Sing. "The main feeling was that inmates were like a contagion - and the more you kept a professional distance, the better off you'd be," Conover writes in "Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing." For their part, the inmates regarded the correctional officers "like their TV." "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," Conover writes. "When grown men are infantilized, most don't take to it nicely." Thankfully there are some lighter moments inside, for example on "waffle day." "The inmates loved waffles and sometimes went to great lengths to acquire more than their share. It was not as bad as the situation on fried chicken day, but it still was bad - a little worse than, say, fish-stick day." Conover is not without compassion for these men, even if he thinks many of them belong behind bars. About one sad case he thinks, "God, you poor knucklehead, why didn't anybody take care of you? Where were your parents?" Thankfully, he resists philosophizing in favor of reporting, except for a rare passage such as this one, which sums up his time: "It was all about absence, wasn't it - the absence of imprisoned men from the lives of the people who loved them; the absence of love in prison. And also - what you could never forget - the absence in the hearts of decent people, the holes that criminals punched in their lives, the absence of the things they took: money, peace of mind, health, and entire lives, because they were selfish or sick or scared or just couldn't wait."
Rating:
Summary: Just Read It!
Review: This is a fascinating story that gives a behind-the-walls look at what actually goes on in a prison. I sent this book to an incarcerated friend but it was intercepted by the warden. Geez... I didn't realize it was THAT controversial.
Rating:
Summary: This "Sing Sing" ex-resident approves
Review: I lived in Ossining, New York from 1970 to 1994 and can say that most of the village's residents have little or nothing to do with Sing Sing Prison, which lies at the southern edge of town. Tucked away off the main drags of Route 9 and Spring Street with no sign pointing the way, and only entirely visible from a boat on the Hudson, it is even hard to find. The only times most residents are reminded of its presence are during hot summer nights when corrections officers' PA announcements can be heard clearly as far as 2 miles away.And after reading this book I don't think the prison or the community will be "reaching out to each other" any time soon. Sing Sing's administration has more than enough to worry about within its own walls. There are a lot of great lines in this book, my favorite being something like "The longer I worked there the easier it was for me to believe that anyone, anywhere, could be guilty of any conceivable crime." Conover also punctures one of society's most cherished myths about maximum security prison life--I won't reveal it, but you can probably guess which one it is.
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Summary: Excellent
Review: Just do yourself a favor and buy this Book! Very interesting!
Rating:
Summary: Highly Recommended
Review: This book was a very entertaining and enlightening read. Conover really gives the reader a sense of genuine prison life which is not always apparent from TV and the movies. Conover also really appreciates the moral complexity of how we treat criminals and the many paradoxes inherent in the relationships between prisoners and their jailers. The book abounds with intriguing anecdotes as well as Conover's keen insights into criminal justice. I would recommend it for just about anybody.
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Summary: Outside the bars looking in.
Review: I'm not going to tell you anything about this book you haven't already heard (what it's about and why it's so good). Just do yourself a favor: buy it. It's both fascinating and enlightening.
Rating: 
Summary: First Rate Journalism
Review: You have to admire any author who has the courage to put his neck on the line to gather material for a book. There are not many of us would be willing to spend a year as a corrections officer in one of the toughest prisons of the country, the infamous Sing Sing, for the sake of a book. Ted Conover did just that and the result is a book that is both relevant and needed, because there is too little written from the vantage point of the CO - the man or woman who goes to work everyday in one of the most drab and dangerous environments possible. (Although Mr. Conover has received his share of criticism from other CO's for writing the book, overall it casts the profession in a positive light. It's impossible for any reader to not come away with some degree of empathy and respect for those guarding our prisons.) Within those old, decaying walls of Sing Sing, and other prisons like it, there is a climate of fear and a delicate balance between control and potential chaos. Mr. Conover captures that world in detail in "Newjack." It's a fine piece of journalism.
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Summary: a book that matters
Review: scary, honest, human, even-handed, exciting, brave. i'm not much of a writer but those words come to mind! new jack is the best book i've read in a long long time.'
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Summary: ENTHRALLING INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING
Review: Conover does what few authours would dare try. He becomes the subject of his book and the result in the best nonfiction work I have ever read. There are many authors who try to write prison accounts and fail because of their inability to relate to the subject. There are also correctional officers who think that they can write and publish less than interesting books as a result. Conover is an established author who became a New York State Correctional Officer and worked in Sing Sing for a year. That is the perfect example of in depth reporting. 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.
Rating:
Summary: Undercover reporting at its best.
Review: Conover once again provides a valuable service to readers by putting his personal safety in jeopardy to get a behind-the-scenes, first-person account of a job that is absolutely essential but that few of us would sign up for. His subjects are even more candid than those in "Coyotes," because this time around, no one knows he's a journalist. On the downside, his chapter on the history of New York prisons needs compacting--inane comments like "guarding could be done either poorly or well" should have been axed. He occasionally swallows inmates' tales whole: He takes a prisoner at his word that the gang name "Bloods" was meant to be an acronym for something uplifting; the story about Delacruz's age mixup raises more questions than it answers; and he's left awestruck by an inmate's lame argument that higher welfare spending is the key to deterring would-be criminals. Still, he tells a riveting story, and sees things that even the best investigative reporters have never glimpsed.
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