Ted Conover's Newjack: The Green Knight

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.
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