50 Book Challenge: book 15
Holding the Key: My Year as a Guard in Sing Sing – Ted Conover
Here’s a question that every journalist has to face at some point in their career: how far will you go to get a story? And it’s a question that can lead to a lot of trouble. The profession is shot through from top to bottom with a macho, competitive culture that can influence women into risk-taking as much as men. It leads people (me included, on occasions) to get themselves into situations they really should have had the sense to avoid – just so they can say they got the story and have another anecdote to bring out in the pub afterwards.
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Ted Conover provides us with a new perspective on this problem. Back in the mid-90s, according to the introductory chapters to this book, he became interested in the New York State correctional system. He tried the normal channels and hit a brick wall. The authorities weren’t interested in letting this curious journalist anywhere near their institutions:
“I was here, basically, because the Department had told me I couldn’t be. The [Correction Officer training] academy, they said, was off-limits to journalists – no exceptions, end of conversation. Now, why should that be, I wondered? With prisons so much in the news, costing so much money, and confining such unprecedented numbers of people, it seemed to me that their operation should be completely transparent.
“I have been fascinated by prisons for a long time. Nothing, I think engages my imagination like a wall… Tightly-knit cultures or subcultures, such as the police, represent a different kind of locked door. By combining journalism with anthropology I have tried, in previous writings, not to simply observe but to participate in the lives of railroad tramps, illegal Mexican immigrants, Kenyan truckers and even the elite of Aspen, Colorado. Sometimes these worlds lie through an open door through which no writer has thought to pass for a while. Other times, the door is locked and getting in requires extra effort.”
In order to get his story Conover spent several months waiting to sit the relevant tests for a civil service job and then, afterwards, for his appointment letter to arrive on the doormat, did a stringent seven–week stint at the training academy of the Department of Correctional Services and then spent a year (1997-98) facing up to his fear and working as a corrections officer working in one of the toughest available prisons – the maximum-security Sing Sing, with appreciable effects on his health, his state of mind and his family relationships.
And, I have to admit, this impressed me. If we are talking about the distance to a story, this must rank among the longest walks that a journalist has taken to get there. It has produced a fine, compelling and readable book which raises as many questions about journalism as it does about the American penal system. The first, and most obvious to my mind, is whether he managed to retain his objectivity, or whether he ‘went native’.
It’s certainly true that he came to appreciate the perspective of the Corrections Officer very strongly and, when the book came out and his deception was revealed, colleagues’ opinions were some of the ones he appears to have cared most about. It’s true there are some criticisms of prison staff, particularly those in authority or the big, brutal ones who club together to make their own rules and cover each other’s mistakes. It’s also true that any criticisms of his own colleagues that he does make are heavily tempered with an understanding of their circumstances – and how could it be otherwise? His feelings of ambivalence towards the inmates are also documented – while he finds many frustrating and scary he does make attempts to connect with some of them, and finds men that he can respect. And anyone looking for information on the racial politics of the penal system, including the problems experienced by members of minority ethnic groups who choose to work as prison staff, will also find plenty to think about.
The result is an extraordinary and extremely readable piece of journalism which kept my attention nearly from beginning to end. There is a low point when the narrative swerves, seemingly apropos of nothing, into the history of the American penal system and stays there for 40 pages. But I suppose it had to go somewhere. Conover, perhaps unsurprisingly, concludes the main villain in the piece is the system rather than the people on either side of the bars – especially the drugs laws that see people incarcerated for long periods for what may be argued are relatively minor offences. It’s a remarkably human book, full of insights, and a definite recommended read.
Anyone wondering what the author did next can always visit his website: http://www.tedconover.com/.