Newjack: Part One
“The job, [the sergeant] said in conclusion, was about care, custody, and control. ‘The gray uniforms are the good guys and the green uniforms are the bad guys. That’s what it’s all about.’ And in twenty-five years, we’d have a pension.” (p. 16).
It’s the 1990s and Ted Conover is a “newjack”: a rookie prison guard at Sing Sing correctional facility in New York. Unbeknownst to his supervisors, Conover is also an author and journalist. After his request to shadow a correctional officer recruit was rejected by the New York State Corrections Academy, he applied to be trained in the Academy himself. Published in 2000, Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing is the nonfiction account of Conover’s experiences in the nearly 12 months he spent as a correctional officer (CO).
It is clear when reading Newjack that Conover is not a social worker. His intentions when entering Sing Sing seem to be from a place of fascination more than anything else. He seeks to understand the perspectives of COs whose experiences are not often described in the media. While Conover addresses the issues of mass-incarceration in New York, his journey at Sing Sing is not one of social activism.
The first three chapters of Newjack detail Conover’s experiences in the Academy. He and other recruits are tested mentally and physically as they meet with trained instructors and shadow veteran officers inside the prisons. The Academy is strict, the culture is bleak, and the lessons send trainees mixed signals. Conover explains that “many [COs] judge themselves and their peers on the degree of control they [are] able to maintain over inmates” (p. 31), and it becomes clear that COs and sergeants have strong opinions about incarcerated people. Prison rules and regulations are seen as optional and implemented at the officers’ discretion. Physical force is not only allowed, it is encouraged: Training recruits are given myriad options to exert control. When Conover suggests practicing verbal communication skills with the incarcerated people, he is met with shock from his peers and superiors at the Academy.
At the end of his time in the Academy, Conover reflects on his experiences and realizes that his time in training has been eerily like being incarcerated. As a CO trainee, he followed a million rules, got sprayed with chemicals, waited in lines, wore numbers on his shirts, and was supervised at all times. A major difference was that when the training was over, the keys were in Conover’s hands. The farewell message he receives before beginning as a CO at Sing Sing is reflective of the Academy experience: “‘You’re the zookeeper now,’ said [an officer]. ‘Go run the zoo.’” (p.94).
As social workers, we are encouraged to have hope that people will do the right thing, but it would be naive to ignore the history of abuse that prison staff have inflicted on incarcerated people. Conover highlights the ways in which CO training may fuel the violent oppression of incarcerated people by not only normalizing, but encouraging, their abuse and dehumanization. Newjack serves as a reminder to those of us working with incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people to be cognizant of institutional power imbalances that have caused and continue to cause unspeakable trauma inside correctional facilities.
Conover helps uncover the realities of oppression that exist in the criminal-legal system and reminds us as researchers why we must continue to build knowledge about these systems. The SHAWN project seeks to learn about the lived experiences of justice involved women with criminal-legal systems during COVID. Newjack informs our work by describing incarceration systems, from the perspective of COs, and illustrating the intricate ways in which dehumanization can be perpetuated by institutional practices.
