NewJack: Guarding Sing Sing: Chapter 1

by Ted Conover
In this nonfiction account, a journalist applies for a job as a corrections officer and explores conditions in one of America's most dangerous prisons.

Here are links to our lists for the book: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7–Epilogue
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. massive
    imposing in size or bulk or solidity
    Massive, tan, and almost windowless, it looks like a hangar for a short, fat rocket.
  2. hodgepodge
    a motley assortment of things
    The men’s locker room—I’ve never seen the women’s—is itself nearly abandoned; though it’s stuffed with a hodgepodge of some two hundred lockers of inmate manufacture, fewer than twenty are actively used.
    Although the noun has a pleasant origin (it used to refer to a stew made in one pot with the ingredients of goose, herbs, spices and wine), here it is used in a negative sense to refer to lockers that were made by inmates and do not have uniform quality (compare to "various" in this list). Later, it is used to refer to all of Sing Sing--a place which started in 1825, got added to over the years, and is now an assortment of past and present buildings.
  3. neglect
    the state of something that has been unused and ignored
    The feel of neglect is somehow truer to the spirit of Sing Sing.
  4. decrepit
    worn and broken down by hard use
    A decrepit footbridge takes me over the tracks of the Metro North railroad—Sing Sing may be the only prison anywhere with a commuter railroad running through it—and other officers start to appear.
  5. arsenal
    a military structure where arms and ammunition are stored
    To the left, officers are lined up, waiting to deposit their handguns at the outside window of the Arsenal.
  6. cursory
    hasty and without attention to detail; not thorough
    The officer takes a cursory peek inside my lunch bag—the contraband check.
  7. corridor
    an enclosed passageway
    And we’re off, not exactly at a run, through the long, rough corridors and up the hill to begin the day.
  8. sprawl
    go, come, or spread in a rambling or irregular way
    Sing Sing sprawls over fifty-five acres, most of it rocky hillside.
  9. diurnal
    of or belonging to or active during the day
    They trade normal diurnal rhythms for the perk of having very little inmate contact—at night, all the inmates are locked in their cells.
  10. various
    of many different kinds lacking any uniformity
    The tunnels snake around Sing Sing, joining the various buildings, and at the beginning and end of each—sometimes even in the middle—there is a locked gate.
  11. impressive
    producing a strong effect
    A-block and B-block are the most impressive buildings in Sing Sing, and in a totally negative sense.
  12. preamble
    a preliminary introduction, as to a statute or constitution
    The size of the buildings catches the first-time visitor by surprise, and that’s largely because there’s no preamble.
    The use of the noun here connects to its Latin roots: "prae" means "before" and "ambulare" means "to walk." The example sentence describes the lack of a physical, not a verbal, introduction to the buildings. In the outside world, a large building might have a wide staircase or arched gate that leads up to it. But in Sing Sing, the cellblock's entrance is through an enclosed corridor, so you don't see how big the building is until you're in it.
  13. stupefy
    make senseless or dizzy by or as if by a blow
    And enter into a stupefying vastness.
  14. encompass
    include in scope
    You can hear them—an encompassing, overwhelming cacophony of radios, of heavy gates slamming, of shouts and whistles and running footsteps—but, oddly, at first you can’t see a single incarcerated soul.
    The definition is for a verb, but the word is used as a participial adjective to mean "closely encircling." The example sentence describes being physically surrounded by the noises of the inmates. For a first-time visitor, this can be "overwhelming"--which has a similar meaning to "encompassing" but carries a stronger sense of being covered completely and being overcome by emotions.
  15. extend
    stretch out over a distance, space, time, or scope
    All you see are the bars that form the narrow fronts of their cells, extending four stories up and so far into the distance on the left and right that they melt into an illusion of solidity.
  16. dimension
    a construct distinguishing objects or individuals
    And when you start walking down the gallery, eighty-eight cells long, and begin to make eye contact with inmates, one after another after another, some glaring, some dozing, some sitting bored on the toilet, a sense grows of the human dimensions of this colony.
    "Dimension" has the Latin root "metiri" which means "to measure." This is suggested by the previous sentences' descriptions of the size of the cellblock. But here, the word is deliberately used to contrast that, because humans cannot be so easily measured.
  17. retract
    pull inward or towards a center
    Ahead of you may be a half-dozen small mirrors held through the bars by dark arms; these retract as you draw even, and you and the inmate get a brief but direct look at each other.
    The chosen definition focuses only on physical movement. This would fit an objective description of the inmates' action. But as the author gets to know the inmates, he could also connect individuals to a more subjective definition: "pull away from a source of disgust or fear." The inmates could be retracting the mirrors, because they are retracting from the disgust at whom they see or from the fear of being punished for trying to see who is coming.
  18. align
    arrange so as to be parallel or straight
    A-block and B-block are aligned with each other, end to end, and span the top of Sing Sing; between them sits the mess-hall building.
  19. innovative
    introducing new ideas or creative methods
    Though few civilians have seen anything like them, there is nothing architecturally innovative about the design.
  20. prototype
    a standard or typical example
    It plainly derives from the 1826 cellblock, based on Auburn’s “new” north wing, which was the prototype for most American cell-house construction
  21. tier
    one of two or more layers one atop another
    tiny cells back to back on five tiers, with a stairway at either end and one at the center of the very long range.
  22. component
    one of the individual parts making up a larger entity
    From the ground floor, which in both buildings is known as the flats, you can look up and see how each structure is made up of two almost separate components.
  23. interior
    the region that is inside of something
    One is the all-metal interior, containing the inmates; it’s painted gray and looks as though it could have been welded in a shipyard.
  24. comprise
    include or contain
    The other is comprised of the exterior walls and roof, a brick-and-concrete shell that fits over the cells like a dish over a stick of butter.
  25. diffuse
    transmitted from a broad light source or reflected
    As it is, they let pass a diffuse, smog-colored glow, which crosses about fifteen feet of open space on each side before it reaches the metal, which it does not warm.
  26. structure
    the building of something and the arrangement of its parts
    If the whole structure were radically shrunk, the uninitiated might perceive a vaguely agricultural purpose; the cages might be thought to contain chickens, or mink.
  27. absorb
    take in a liquid
    The blocks are loud because they are hard. There is nothing inside them to absorb sound except the inmates’ thin mattresses and their bodies.
  28. concrete
    a strong hard building material made with gravel and cement
    Every other surface is of metal or concrete or brick.
    As an adjective, "concrete" means "capable of being perceived by the senses." This does not apply to the example sentence, which is focused on describing the cellblock. But in his detailed descriptions, the author makes Sing Sing seem concrete to his readers.
  29. gallery
    narrow balcony area along an upper floor of a building
    Since the galleries are all locked down at night, mainly her job is to check, every hour or so, that every inmate is still breathing.
    Compare with "corridor" in this list (the Italian "corridore" means "gallery"). In Sing Sing, the two words refer to structures with different purposes. The corridors are tunnels for the officers and inmates to move from one place to another (the Latin "correre" means "to run"), while the galleries are the floors on which the inmates are locked up (the connection to exhibiting artwork is not intended, but could be seen as ironic).
  30. deadlock
    a situation in which no progress can be made
    “The cells are all deadlocked,” she adds before leaving, which means that not only is the huge bar, or “brake,” in place which locks them all at once but the cells are locked individually.
    The example sentence defines how the word is used in Sing Sing, which is not in the same way in the outside world. Physically, when the inmates are deadlocked in their cells, they are in a situation where their movements are very limited. But the author later shows that seeing the inmates' entire situation as a deadlock can be deadly.
Created on Tue Mar 31 14:35:34 EDT 2015 (updated Mon Oct 01 15:12:53 EDT 2018)

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