 |
|||
| A
publication of the Justice Center |
Alaska Justice Statistical Analysis Center |
||
 |
|||
|
Stereotype of the Brutal Guard
John Riley
Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing
By Ted Conover
New York: Random House, 2000
321 pages
Popular culture is a curious
thing. In a society where writers spend vast amounts of time
and energy exploring the character complexities of criminals,
portrayals of correctional officers are almost consistently unflattering
and one-dimensional. Correctional officers are almost always
portrayed as bad guys. They are depicted as inherently sadistic
and mindlessly authoritarian, as one-dimensional characters without
redeeming qualities.
This inaccurate and unsympathetic
image of the guard is a staple of both popular fiction and many
firsthand accounts of prison life. It can be found in the writings
of Jack Abbot, Brendan Behan, and Eldridge Cleaver, and in films
like “Cool Hand Luke”, “Brubaker”, and “Shawshank
Redemption.” There are, of course, exceptions. One of these
is Ted Conover’s new book, Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing.
It is one of a very few recent books to get beyond the stereotype
of the brutal guard to explore the complex nature of correctional
work.
Conover is now well-known for
a series of books recounting in-depth, firsthand experiences
of some of American society’s more obscure subcultures.
He spent a year hopping freight trains with homeless men, traveled
with illegal Mexican immigrants, and took a job driving a cab
in Aspen in order to have an opportunity to observe the city’s
wealthy winter visitors. His work has been described as “experiential
journalism.” In fact, Conover’s writing often seems
to blur the boundaries between journalism and the observational
methods of the social sciences. He typically offers readers the
kind of thoughtful and meticulous research characteristic of
good scholarship while demonstrating the storyteller’s gift
for compelling narrative. This is certainly the case in Newjack,
a beautifully written book that most readers will find moving
and informative, if sometimes controversial.
Conover spent a year working as
a “newjack”—the inmate term for a newly minted
New York state correctional officer. Upon leaving the training
academy he was assigned to work in Sing Sing, the state’s
maximum security prison in Ossining, where most new officers
spend their first months on the job. Newjack tells the
story of Conover’s introduction to correctional work. After
a short time at the academy and a brief period of on-the-job
training, Conover found himself working, often alone and always
unarmed, in galleries housing sixty or more inmates. As a newjack,
he was responsible for the care and custody of scared young first-timers,
drug addicts, gang members, violent predators, physically debilitated
inmates suffering from diseases like AIDS and TB, and an assortment
of “bugs”— prison slang for the mentally ill.
Conover sought out a work assignment
that would maximize his opportunity to observe prison life. Most
of his time at Sing Sing was spent in close contact with the
inmates, in dining halls and housing galleries, doing strip searches,
searching cells, writing disciplinary infraction reports, and
confiscating inmate contraband. Because they live in an enforced
state of near helplessness, responding to inmates who required
assistance with an apparently endless array of personal problems
filled much of Conover’s time.
Conover’s description of
the correctional officer’s role is largely consistent with
that offered by others who have firsthand experience of prison
life. It brings to mind Lucien Lombardo’s work on Auburn
Prison, Barbara Owen’s on San Quentin, and even Gresham
Sykes’ classic, Society of Captives. In brief, virtually
all serious, firsthand accounts of correctional work describe
a gap between the training and the reality of the job, official
policies and procedures that require routine circumvention, poor
relations between line officers and administrators, and the corrosive
influence of stress on professional conduct and personal life.
Conover also covers all of this,
describing the overwhelming confusion of a new officer’s
first days in a crowded housing unit, illustrating the newjack’s
dependence on the goodwill of inmates, depicting the apparent
hostility and indifference of senior colleagues, and demonstrating
the inevitability of making serious and even life-threatening
mistakes in the chaotic world of the prison. In doing that, Conover
helps readers get beyond the stereotype of the brutal guard to
see correctional officers as individuals, offering us a chance
to understand how the prison experience shapes their professional
lives and inevitably influences their personal relationships.
Newjack is not a puff piece
for the profession, as Conover’s crisp and unsparing description
of fellow officers and their attitudes makes clear. The language
of angry officers, and their apocryphal stories of inmate abuse,
which he relates, may be interpreted by some readers as evidence
of sadism and brutality in American prisons. Inmates are described
as the “lowest of the low” and officers describe themselves
as “warehousers” and “baby-sitters.” One
officer claims he “wouldn’t piss them [inmates] if
they were on fire” while others reminisce about the good
old days and describe up-state institutions where a correctional
officer can still simply “beat the shit out of” disrespectful
or uncooperative inmates. These and other remarks will probably
leave some officers wishing that they had never met Conover;
but on the whole, this is a balanced work that could never have
been written by someone who lacked respect for correctional officers.
Perhaps Conover’s most important
achievement in Newjack is found in his description of
the fundamental moral ambiguity that characterizes correctional
work. He succeeds in portraying correctional officers as people
who are forced by the circumstances of their work to continually
struggle with contradictory impulses. Conover himself clearly
struggled as much with his fundamental inclination to reach out
to people in trouble as with the anger and frustration he sometimes
felt toward those he helped to hold captive. Early on we find
him fantasizing about beating inmates and burning their cell
house. At one point, not long after coming to Sing Sing, Conover
heard a story about an inmate who was beaten by correctional
officers after striking an officer in the head with a broom handle.
According to Conover:
A month earlier I would have reacted negatively to a story like that. But now, seeing how outnumbered officers were and feeling more like prey than predator, I found in the tale a grain of comfort.
Later Conover comes to ignore many minor inmate rule violations and eventually violates prison regulations by bringing inmates contraband cigarettes and literature during the Christmas holidays.
Cigarettes packs that lacked a New York State revenue stamp… were not allowed to be distributed to inmates, and were apparently thrown away. I thought of the inmates I know whom nobody was likely to remember at Christmas. There were lots of them. My heart went out to the most pathetic. When no one was looking I stuffed about a dozen of the cigarette packs into my jacket.
Conover’s interest in the theme of dangerous and almost uncontrollable sympathy for those we punish is conveyed in a quotation from Amos Squire, a New York prison doctor who supervised 138 executions—some in Sing Sing’s electric chair.
I had given the signal for the current to be turned on—while the man in the chair was straining against the straps as the load of 2200 volts shot through his body—I felt for the first time a wild desire to extend my hand and touch him.... At each subsequent execution, the impulse became stronger. It finally got so compelling that I was forced to grip my fingernails into my palm to control it. Each time I had to stand farther and farther from the chair.
Conover sees correctional workers as multidimensional characters,
neither good nor bad, but as people struggling as we all do to
behave well in difficult circumstances. In Newjack, Conover
leaves his readers with the sense that for most officers success
is more a matter of controlling the contradictions of genuine
empathy and justified anger than conquering the kind of sadism
portrayed in popular films like “Cool Hand Luke,” or
“Shawshank Redemption.” Conover must be congratulated
for his able exploration of the tensions inherent in these contradictions.
If Conover’s overall effort
to offer a realistic picture of the correctional officer is largely
successful, his account of prison sexuality will undoubtedly
generate some criticism. His claim that non-consensual sex is
now rare in Sing Sing does not ring true. It raises troubling
questions about the efficacy of Sing Sing’s staff and may
well constitute a denial of responsibility for the protection
of vulnerable inmates. Given a long-standing convict code that
discourages inmates from reporting victimization, it is hard
to know how much rape occurs in prison. Even so, Conover’s
discussion of disciplinary infractions and openly transsexual
inmates suggests that homosexual relations were clearly commonplace
during his time at Sing Sing. Considering the extraordinary power
differentials that separate young, weak and unconnected inmates
from older, stronger, gang-affiliated convicts, it is hard to
know how anyone can establish that what sometimes passes for
consent in prison is freely given and truly uncoerced.
Some readers will also be troubled
by Conover’s assertion that voluntary sexual encounters
between female staff and inmates may be more common than prison
rape at Sing Sing. Is Conover buying into the macho ideology
of male guards? There are many opportunities for male officers
to engage in sexual misconduct on duty, after all, and Conover
himself was solicited at least once. In the end, it’s hard
to know because he does not delve deeply into this issue. And
while some readers may fault him for this, others will doubtless
find themselves still learning more about the topic than they
really wanted to know.
Correctional officers play a critical
role in the administration of justice by making the sentence
of the court a reality. Even so, it is not often that we look
beyond popular stereotypes to give them the kind of serious consideration
that they deserve. In Newjack, Conover invites us to do
just that. It is hard to imagine a better opportunity.
John Riley is an assistant professor with the Justice Center.