Newjack (57 page)
Authors: Ted Conover
One thing had not changed:
“These Are Your N.Y. State Correctional Facilities: 8. Sing Sing Prison, Part II,” in
Correction
, a publication of the New York State Department of Correction, Vol. XIV, No. VIII (August—September 1949), p. 4.
Dr. R. T. Irvine deduced:
Ibid., p. 4.
A 1905 State Prison Improvement:
Ibid., p. 4.
the cellblock “continued to hang”:
Ibid., p. 3.
The incident that has erupted:
Tom Wicker,
A Time to Die: The Attica Prison Revolt
, p. 319.
Lewis Lawes wrote:
Lewis E. Lawes,
Twenty Thousand Years in Sing Sing
, p.
66
.
Looking back for the reasons:
“Report to Governor Mario M. Cuomo: Disturbance at Ossining Correctional Facility, Jan. 8–11, 1983,” by Lawrence T. Kurlander, Director of Criminal Justice, State of New York, September 1983, p. 224.
It had become a place:
Ibid., pp. 25–26.
Five guards and a sergeant:
The New York Times
, 29 July 1982, p. B3.
In 1986 a burglar:
The Citizen Register
(Ossining, New York), 14 December 1986, p. 1.
SING SING SEXCAPADES:
New York
Daily News
, 30 January 1988, pp. 1–2.
Upon assuming the wardenship:
Lewis E. Lawes,
Twenty Thousand Years in Sing Sing
, pp. 68, 74.
One thing that the judges:
Eldridge Cleaver,
Soul on Ice
, p. 58.
According to a legislative report:
Report of the Select Committee
[to examine prisons]
of the
[New York State]
Assembly of 1851 … transmitted to the legislature, Jan. 7, 1852
, pp. 5–6.
We will turn this prison from a scrap heap:
Rudolph W. Chamberlain,
There Is No Truce: A Life of Thomas Mott Osborne
, p. 412. The quote adorned a tablet set into the wall at 114 East 30th Street in New York, once the home of the Osborne Association, a nonprofit organization providing services to ex-offenders.
the number of young men:
according to estimates of the number of resident males age eighteen to twenty-four. Population Estimates Program, Population Division, U.S. Census Bureau, Washington, D.C. 20233.
A state prison inspectors’ report of 1845:
“Report of the Committee appointed to examine the condition of Insane Convicts,” in
Annual Report of the Inspectors of the Mount-Pleasant State Prison
, January 10, 1845, pp. 16–20.
Shortly after I left Sing Sing:
The New York Times
, 7 April 1999, p. A1.
Abbott, Jack Henry.
In the Belly of the Beast: Letters from Prison
. New York: Random House, 1981; reprint ed., New York: Vintage Books, 1991.
Abu-Jamal, Mumia.
Death Blossoms: Reflections from a Prisoner of Conscience
. Farmington, Pennsylvania: The Plough Publishing House, 1997.
Beaumont, Gustave de, and Alexis de Toqueville
[sic], On the Penitentiary System in the United States and Its Application to France
. Translated by Francis Lieber. Philadelphia: Carey, Lea & Blanchard, 1833; reprint ed., New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1970.
Bergner, Daniel.
God of the Rodeo: The Search for Hope, Faith, and a Six-Second Ride in Louisiana’s Angola Prison
. New York: Crown, 1998.
Brice, James R.
Secrets of the Mount-Pleasant State Prison, Revealed and Exposed: An Account of the Unjust Proceedings Against James R. Brice, Esq., by which he was convicted of the Crime of Perjury, Accompanied by Affidavits to Prove His Innocency: Also an account of the Inhuman Treatment of Prisoners by some of the Keepers; and an authentic statement of the officers and salaries, with other curious matters before unknown to the public
. Albany, New York: 1839.
Burr, Levi S.
A Voice From Sing Sing, giving a general description of the state prison, a short and comprehensive geological history of the Quality of the Stone of the Quarries; and a synopsis of the Horrid Treatment of the Convicts in That Prison
. Albany, New York: 1833.
Chamberlain, Rudolph W.
There Is No Truce: A Life of Thomas Mott Osborne
. New York: Macmillan, 1935.
Cheever, John.
Falconer
. New York: Knopf, 1977.
Christianson, Scott.
Condemned: Inside the Sing Sing Death House
. New York: New York University Press, 2000.
Christianson, Scott.
With Liberty for Some: 500 Years of Imprisonment in America
. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998.
Cleaver, Eldridge.
Soul on Ice
. New York: Dell, 1968.
Earley, Pete.
The Hot House: Life Inside Leavenworth Prison
. New York: Bantam, 1992.
Foucault, Michel.
Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison
. Translated by Alan Sheridan. New York: Pantheon, 1978; reprint ed., New York: Vintage, 1995.
Frank, Anne.
The Diary of a Young Girl: The Definitive Edition
. New York: Doubleday, 1995; reprint ed., New York: Bantam, 1997.
Gilligan, James, M.D.
Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic
. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1996; reprint ed., New York: Vintage, 1997.
Jackson, George.
Soledad Brother
. New York: Coward-McCann, 1970; reprint ed., Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 1994.
Jacobson-Hardy, Michael.
Behind the Razor Wire: Portrait of a Contemporary American Prison System
. Photographs and text by Michael Jacobson-Hardy; foreword by Angela Y. Davis; essays by John Edgar Wideman, Marc Mauer, and James Gilligan, M.D. New York: New York University Press, 1999.
Johnson, Robert.
Hard Time: Understanding and Reforming the Prison
. Belmont, California: Wadsworth, 1996.
Johnston, Norman.
The Human Cage: A Brief History of Prison Architecture
. New York: Walker & Co., 1973.
Kauffman, Kelsey.
Prison Officers and Their World
. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988.
Lawes, Lewis E.
Twenty Thousand Years in Sing Sing
. New York: Ray Long and Richard R. Smith, 1932.
Liberatore, Paul.
The Road to Hell: The True Story of George Jackson, Stephen Bingham, and the San Quentin Massacre
. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1996.
Luckey, John.
Life in Sing Sing State Prison, as seen in a twelve years chaplaincy
. New York: N. Tibbals, 1860.
Metzger, Th.
[sic] Blood and Volts
. Brooklyn, New York: Autonomedia, 1996.
Mitford, Jessica.
Kind and Usual Punishment: The Prison Business
. New York: Knopf, 1973.
Morris, Norval, and David J. Rothman, eds.
The Oxford History of the Prison: The Practice of Punishment in Western Society
. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Nelson, Victor.
Prison Days and Nights
. Boston: Little, Brown, 1933; reprint ed., Garden City, New York: Garden City Publishing Co., 1936.
Newman, Christopher.
Killer
. New York: Dell, 1997.
Number 1500.
Life in Sing Sing
. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1904.
Osborne, Thomas Mott.
Within Prison Walls: Being a Narrative of Personal Experience During A Week of Voluntary Confinement in the State Prison at Auburn, New York
. New York: D. Appleton, 1914.
Pierson, George Wilson.
Tocqueville in America
. New York: Oxford University Press, 1938; reprint ed., Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Paperbacks, 1996.
Puig, Manuel.
Kiss of the Spider Woman
. New York: Knopf, 1979; reprint ed., New York: Vintage, 1980.
Reich, Ilan K.
A Citizen Crusade for Prison Reform: The History of the Correctional Association of New York
. New York: The Correctional Association of New York, 1975.
Shakur, Sanyika, aka Kody Scott.
Monster: The Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member
. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1993; reprint ed., New York: Penguin, 1994.
Sing Sing Prison: Its History, Purpose, Makeup and Program
. Albany: New York State Department of Correction, 1958.
Squire, Amos O., M.D.
Sing Sing Doctor
. Garden City, New York: Garden City Publishing Co., 1937.
Tannenbaum, Frank.
Osborne of Sing Sing
. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1933.
Wicker, Tom.
A Time to Die: The Attica Prison Revolt
. New York: Quadrangle/New York Times Book Co., 1975; reprint ed., Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1994.
Wideman, John Edgar.
Brothers and Keepers
. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1984; reprint ed., New York: Vintage, 1995.
Wines, Frederick Howard.
Punishment and Reformation: A Study of the Penitentiary System
. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1919.
Yates, J. Michael.
Line Screw: My Twelve Riotous Years Working Behind Bars in Some of Canada’s Toughest Jails
. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1993.
FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, JUNE 2001
Copyright © 2000, 2001 by Ted Conover
Map © 2001 by Kayley Le Faiver
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in hardcover, in different form, in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York, in 2000.
Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
A portion of this work has been previously published in
The New Yorker
, and a portion of the Afterword appeared in slightly different form as “Sign It to Perlstein” on
www.contentville.com
.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to Elliot Markowitz for permission to reprint “Seagulls” and “Singing in the Shower.” Reprinted by permission of Elliot Markowitz.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Random House edition as follows:
Conover, Ted.
Newjack : Guarding Sing Sing / Ted Conover.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-1-4000-3309-6
1. Sing Sing Prison. 2. Ossining Correctional Facility. 3. Prisons—New York (State)—Ossining. 4. Conover, Ted. 5. Correctional personnel—New York (State)—Ossining—Biography. 6. Prisons—New York (State)—Ossining—Officials and employees—Biography. I. Title.
HV9475.N72 S563 2000
365′.9′2—dc21
[B] 99-087895
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