Diving into Sing-Sing

Newjack: Guarding Sing-Sing is journalist Ted Conover's latest book. Newjack is different from every other book on prisons, and certainly different from any other book written from the prospective of a prison guard. Conover writes a great story without exaggerating or exploiting the events and people that surround him.

I think the key to appreciating this book is to keep in mind that Conover became a prison guard in order to write about Sing-Sing from an informed perspective. These are not the memoirs of a man who hung out at Sing-Sing for a while, folding sheets and chatting up the other guards. This is a man who applied to became a prison guard, went through a rigorous training period, and became a guard--just so he could write about it. As you read about his encounters with some of the rawest edges of society, keep in mind that this is a man educated at Amherst College, by some of the greatest professors of literature in America. He completely sheds his role as a husband, father, and scholar in order to give his readers a clear picture of the penal system.

Conover's plunge into Sing-Sing is a immersion journalism at its best. His writing style and capacity for empathy allows the reader to live this new life along with him.

As a writer, I would have liked to have seen Conover talk more about the how he reacted to the prison, and how he and his family adjusted to the new role--but that information could have obstructed the storyline and taken away from what was an incredible piece of non-fiction.