Life in Prison - Book Report/Review Example

Ted Conover’s New Jack New Jack has been penned down by Ted Conover. This book entails a complete mode about spending life in prison. It is frightening yet funny, turns out to be sad though has its bright spots as well. The writer has done his bit by projecting a life in prisons and made all and sundry to think about them. His insight has made us realize about the manner in which prison life can take its toil on the best of individuals. The writer has immersed himself so much into the subject that we, as audience and readers start to experience it already. The book is not only compelling and compassionate about its theme, what it has done is that the role played by the writer has been easily flowing and has, for that matter related with the target readers into making them understand and then realize as to how sad and distressing certain things in life can actually be. Ted Conover has touched the intricate details of the American Penal System through his writing. In this, there is a sense of investigation and hidden reporting going on, throughout the duration of the book. This has accounted for the presentation of different ideas as well as opinions which can be summed up as being something close to thrill on the part of the readers. There is something mysterious going on behind the scenes and one should believe that the same is the real taste of the book. The book has not only demarcated a line between the good and the bad in terms of the prisons and their structure, mode and complexities attached but has also made sure that everyone knows about the nature in which justice in America is carried out day in day out. The personal experience of Ted Conover has forced him to put his pen to best practice. When he applied for a job as a prison officer, his assignment to Sing Sing led him into the state’s most infamous and disreputable maximum security facility. Thus this formed the basis for his investigating more and more about the ways and mannerisms in which cases were being dealt, on a daily rate. Not only that but the experiences that were worth the witness had their say on the building up of opinion on his part and in the end, it forced on his intellectual mind to put his thoughts in the form of words and thus compose this book. The book is not only exceptional, it is a masterpiece as it has touched upon the points that have never been discussed or talked about before, at least in the American territories. It is a bold step that Ted Conover has taken and surely one which will go a long way in building up the image and the tainted reputation of the American Penal System and its related institutions. Within the prison, Ted Conover witnessed how it felt to be amongst the most sought after men and women within the nation and the first hand experience was enough to make him realize the extent to which the usage of drugs and violence can be rampant. Gang wars and other similar things were something that one usually witnessed in the prisons from time to time. He also met some distinct characters there, including the transvestites as well as the mentally ill inmates known as the ‘bugs’ and a thick skinned supervisor who was known by the name of Mama Cradle. It was in the beginning of the job that he had applied for the post of corrections officer. After a period of training and getting acclimatized to the hang of things that were there in the office place, he as well as his fellow rookies were called as the “new jacks”. After this, they were assigned to the prisons of Sing Sing. This was a maximum security male prison that was built in the year 1828 by the prisoners themselves. They were whipped again and again by the persons in charge so that they give in their best shot whilst remaining within the prison’s boundaries. Similarly, it was at this prison that New York’s electric chair was operational from 1891 to 1963. In the present times, the brutalities and relentless stress that the prisoners have to go through and add to the same the backbiting as well as the chaos, merely mark the finer (read worse) points of the prisons located in the United States that has more or less played havoc with the lives of hundreds of individuals, with each passing day. The same has thus continued for so long now that people have more or less taken their attention off the issue and thus focused more on other issues. But this does not mean that the role played by the common people of the society and more so by the government should fail, as it is being said all over the US nation that freedom should prevail in the end and quite rightly so, Ted Conover has pointed out the loopholes where work can be done and thus some thing or the other and that too in a good manner needs to be done in an efficient manner as soon as possible. In the book, Ted Conover has mentioned the nature of some of the people who are remarked as being the entering class of correction officers and the trainees. He has generally touched a chord with the fact that all of these officers or trainees wanted to become disciples of law and the agencies that carry out the related practices. However for one reason or the other, they just could not come to terms with the whole system and thus end up becoming the correction officers and see for themselves what is going on rampantly within the lengths and breadths of the US nation. For a starter, as Ted Conover puts it in his book, it is not that easy to digest the amount of beating, drugs and backbiting that goes on, yet with the passage of time, things start to shape up and these trainees themselves either end up becoming a part of the whole gang or just quit it in the very beginning. It makes an individual really hard if he can absorb the whole trauma of what he has to go through after joining the US prison system as correction officers or trainees for that matter. Similarly, other officers who had aspired for these jobs were either ex-military men or hailed from the police who wanted to have a civilian job after they retired from the respective careers. These people had in mind that the job in prison system that reward them monetarily as well as give them a chance to have a better standing in the society. They were so wrong in assessing that the same was not the case, as far as US prison system is concerned and that they were putting their hand in the wrong corner whilst thinking on these patterns. The reward structure and disciplinary life that they had thought about just could not come to terms with what they had aspired for in the first place and it is no surprise for one and all to find out that the same comes as nothing short of a shock for the persons involved. In fact this is something that stuns even the best amongst us and they decide, due to all the above mentioned reasons and opinions, that it is best to stay away from the environs of the prison system and concentrate on the job at hand, which at the end of the day is to have a proper, smooth and hassle free life with no ups and downs as such as usually witnessed in the prison system settings. [Hale, 2001] It is without a shadow of a doubt that the scenery sketched by Ted Conover in this book is one that is sure to hit the correction officers and trainees like anything and the ones who aspire to attain this job as well as the related ones, will experience a setback, if not a major one. Within the book, it has been detailed that the most important thing that goes a long way in bridging the gap between a correction officer and his job is to understand that he needs to communicate with his prisoners. This is due to the fact that prisoners are part of some gangs for the best part and they can easily get removed an officer who does not adhere to their wishes and commands. This can go on like this forever and the need of the hour is to understand that having the best form of communication with these prisoners is in the better interest of the people who are working there. It has also been pointed out that there is absolutely no solidarity and oneness amongst the officers and that the same is governed by the type of prisoners one has to look after. In fact the latter govern the whole prison system and thus are the real officers, in the truest sense of the word. There is a shortage of training that should be imparted to the new individuals, on the part of the new officers. They do not mentor them and as such it is up to the new individual to find out whether or not he can easily adapt to the situation at hand or can just quit it for good. There is also the problem of carrying on work unto the shoulders of the officers who will be in other shifts, thus prolonging the amount and duration of work for that matter to nearly years in certain cases. There is thus a lot of inconsistency which is going on day in day out within the offices of the US prison systems and the same can only be done away with if there are proper measures deployed on an immediate basis. Doing the same would make prisoners realize that they are not above the law and there is some force that can always tie their hands whenever they try to hop the boundary. This is indeed very important as someone has to get up and bring about a change as soon as possible. In the end, it can be rightfully said that the US prison system and the attached sets of values, if there are any, need to be revamped for the better and thus there has to be a certain manner in which smooth functioning of the prison has to be brought into action. The book has discussed those points that are usually not covered by media channels and other print forms of the communications. These are usually hidden from the general public and touching on the same issues might just strike a chord somewhere up within the regimes of the US government. Reading New Jack, one finds out that the chaos, the difficulty and the problems have one thing in common. The point is to pinpoint the errors that are so very rampantly being done with each passing day and hence relieve the officers of the difficulties in the way of carrying out their jobs and duties in the best interest of the nation. The role of the prison system is to teach the prisoners that their wrongs can be corrected and not to harden them enough as criminals. Even the young ones, if dropped into the US prison system, would get out becoming real criminals and thus what was not even present there within their thinking mindset and character is now fully developed and given confidence and encouragement by the forces within us. Ted Conover’s book has thus fully pictured the true feelings of the US prison system if it ever was to be a person itself and speak its mind out. Of course, what he has done all this while is to give it a medium to get its frustration out and thus correct the people who have strayed from their set courses of action. Sources Hale, Julie New Jack: Guarding Sing Sing Book Page 2001 Word Count: 2,014 Read More