Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing

You didn’t have to be flaying an inmate’s back with a cat-o’-nine-tails to be wounded by the job. That was simply it’s nature, a feature of prison work as enduring as Sing Sing’s cell block design. “In its application the familiarity it causes with suffering destroys in the breast of the officer all sympathetic feeling.”

To do this job well you had to be fearless, know how to talk to people, have thick skin and a high tolerance for stress.

At Attica and Clinton, he said, inmates didn’t even talk to female officers. It was flat-out forbidden.
“And if they do?” I asked, knowing that every jailhouse rule was eventually violated.
Gaines paused and smiled. He was a soft-spoken, gentle-tempered man.
“They get the fucking shit beat out of them,” he said.
The possibility no longer bothered me as it once had.

The point was that anyone could end up inside. The black officers I knew, especially, seemed to feel this – that the difference between straight life and prison life was a very thin one and that sometimes the decision about which side you were on was not yours to make.

Ted Conover, a journalist, spent about a year as a corrections officer (don't call them guards, that is too accurate for comfort) in the maximum security portion of Sing Sing, a New York state prison located in Westchester county. He took this unusual career move when the authorities showed no interest in letting a journalist poke around the state corrections system by more ordinary means. Sing Sing is one of the oldest prisons in the New York state system; the originally buildings (unused, dam

Ted Conover, a journalist, spent about a year as a corrections officer (don't call them guards, that is too accurate for comfort) in the maximum security portion of Sing Sing, a New York state prison located in Westchester county. He took this unusual career move when the authorities showed no interest in letting a journalist poke around the state corrections system by more ordinary means. Sing Sing is one of the oldest prisons in the New York state system; the originally buildings (unused, damaged, but still visible) were built by prisoners brought in from the prison at Auburn.

Conover and other new employees were given several weeks of training, at a former Catholic seminary, before beginning at Sing Sing. Conover sees most of this training as a sort of hazing, with little relation to the actual job. Much emphasis was placed on crisply made beds (part of the trick is to never actually sleep under the covers once you make the bed), polished shoes, careful shaving, and crisp folds in the uniform. I think this paramilitary aspect is rather undone if you let the new employees go home on weekends, which is what happened. Some aspects of the training, such as hand to hand combat were definitely relevant, other aspects on bureaucratic aspects of how to deal with the prisoners less so, if only because the procedures were not rigorously followed at Sing Sing. Conover views the exposure to tear gas as part of the hazing ritual, but I rather think its a good idea if you may have to use the stuff.

Sing Sing serves as a de facto on-the-job training site for the New York prison system. Much of the reason for this status lies in the demographics of correction officers. Corrections officers are largely from up state New York, which is where most of the prisons are due to the structure of the New York state senate. Consequently, most corrections officers want to work in a up state prison, rather than at Sing Sing which is close enough to New York City to commute from the city, as Conover did. As result, there is a long list of corrections officers trying to transfer to more northerly prisons, and a dearth of officers who want work at Sing Sing. To fill the gap, new corrections officers almost invariably start at Sing Sing. A large majority of corrections officers are white. In contrast, a large proportion of the prisoners are African-American or Latino, and many of them are from New York City. African-American corrections officers often get even more abuse from the prisoners than do white corrections officers, as the inmates think the African-American officers have sold out - "house nigger" is a favorite taunt.

Sing Sing is physically decrepit. Many unused buildings litter the grounds, and the buildings in use lack the features (easier ways to lock the cells, tear gas dispensers in the mess halls, hot water that is reliably hot, etc.) that newer or even updated prisons have. The cell blocks where Conover mainly worked date from about 1930. In addition to the maximum security facility, there is a definitely safer (for all concerned) medium security facility on the same site. Conover never worked in the medium security portion. Sing Sing has a nice view of the Hudson River, unfortunately marred by the concertina wire.

The operation of the prison is also messy. Although new corrections officers go to Sing Sing for on the job training, they may well be trained by people who have only a few weeks more experience than them, and who thus often don't have a clue (yet) themselves. As corrections officers often are moved about to different duties within the prison, or transport prisoners to other prisons, there is often a lack of continuity of personnel in a particular cell block. This matters, because the rules are not enforced uniformly by different officers and in any case often officers must use their judgement. The prisoners get cranky, to put it mildly, when exposed to different standards.

My impression is that most prisoners had little or no work to do, no education programs, and instead spent much of their time in the exercise yard. One tidbit I found most interesting was the prisoners who had spent enough time using the weights and exercised equipment to get really bulked up were rarely discipline problems. I wondered if the prisoners with the most self-control were those most likely to use the weights, or if doing the weightlifting increased their self-control. My hunch is that the latter is true, because if they had had more self-control outside they probably wouldn't have gone to prison in the first place.

Being on duty in the cell blocks, exercise yard, or mess hall is always difficult, has the possibility of being disgusting, and is definitely dangerous. Being on duty in one of the watchtowers on the prison wall, or controlling the entrance and exit of vehicles through one of the gates,is much less stressful. For people who are locked away, prisoners spend a lot of time going to and fro. Prisoners going to the mess hall have to be let out of their cells, locked back up after returning (a process which is drawn out when they talk to their friends in other cells on the way back to their own), and locked in for the evening. Furthermore, there are always exceptions to the general pattern; some prisoners have jobs, which means their shower time is different from the rest, and others are suppposed to be kept locked up in their cells as punishment (the solitary confinement block is fully booked up), but still need to let out for exercise at a different time from the rest, other prisoners have medical appointments or visitors, and so forth. The names of the prisoners with these different statuses are always changing. Consequently, even if everyone were in good humor a corrections officer could quickly become frazzled. But good humor is hard to find. Corrections officers can expect frequent obscenities directed at them; possibly a splash of water, or if the prisoner wants to really make the point, urine or feces; and possibly physical attack. Conover was slugged once; some corrections officers who broke up a fight in an exercise yard while he worked at Sing Sing faired worse.

The most serious violence appears to be usually directed by prisoners at other prisoners. Corrections officers frequently find home-made knives, which are used in prison fights. During Conover's time the violence seemed to be gang-related, though it was hard for the corrections officers to tell. Contrary to numerous movies, rape appeared to be uncommon, apparently because starting in the 1970s prisoners were successful in suing the corrections system for a failure to protect them from rape; consequently the system became quicker in providing protective isolation.

I liked the book, and never want to work in a prison.