Analysis Of Guarding Sing Sing By Ted Conover

Introduction/ Thesis
The jobs of correctional officer are some times overlooked. Correctional officers are playing a huge role in society because they need to perform important tasks. A correctional officer’s job is not easy and can become very stressful at times. Correctional officers are required to enforce and keep order, supervise inmates, help counsel offenders, search inmate cells for contraband, and also report on inmate actions. Correctional officers need to contain power over the prisoners in order to enforce the rules of the prison, or else the prison will not function correctly. In the book, Conover says, “The essential relationship inside a prison is the one between a guard and an inmate…the guard, it is thought, wields all the power, but in truth the inmate has power too” (Conover, p. 207). In the book, the importance of power the prisoner’s hold can be seen through the sudden increase of prisoners, the Stanford Prison Experiment and through the contraband they make.
Book Summary
The book, Guarding Sing Sing by Ted Conover is the story of Conover’s experience of what it is like to work in a prison. Ted Conover is a journalist who was intrigued of what goes on in prison, so he contacted the department of corrections in New York and asked to shadow a recruit to get an understanding of what its like to be a corrections officer to help close the gap of the corrections and the general population. When his request got denied, he decided to apply for a job as a prison officer. Conover goes through training academy in Albany in order to try and get a chance of working in a prison as a correctional officer. Ted is placed at Sing Sing, a troubled maximum-security facility. He is given the position of gallery officer, a positio...

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...also states that the trouble begins with staffing, they do not have enough guards (PGRD) to keep up with the prison population which puts their life’s at risk because they have no backup. With all the contraband that is being brought in, the guards cannot keep up with what all of the inmates are doing, so they typically don’t realize contraband is coming through.
In conclusion, correctional officers such as Ted Conover may think they hold all the power but due to the sudden increase in prisoners and not enough staff, the officers are starting to see how difficult it is to obtain power. The Stanford Prison Experiment also gives us a good sense of the change of power that goes on in a correctional facility and how sometimes the prisoners hold power over the guards. And lastly, inmate power can be seen through the contraband that is made/ brought in on a regular basis.