NewJack: Guarding Sing Sing: Chapter 2

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. slogan
    a favorite saying of a sect or political group
    TOTAL QUALITY, it said, A D.O.C.S. COMMITMENT. A passable slogan for a factory but an odd concept, it seemed to me, for junior prison guards.
  2. ominous
    threatening or foreshadowing evil or tragic developments
    It was not an easy job; it was not for everybody. That sounded kind of ominous.
  3. custody
    a state of being confined, usually for a short time
    The job, he said in conclusion, was about care, custody, and control.
    In divorce cases, "custody" means "the right to house and care for and discipline a child." This is not how the word is used in the example sentence, but the definition covers the 3 Cs of a correction officer's job. The author also observes later that the inmates are like "a nightmarishly large brood of sullen, dangerous, and demanding children."
  4. aversion
    a feeling of intense dislike
    I had a feeling of dread—born of fatigue and aversion to military discipline—that I tried to disguise.
  5. predisposed
    made susceptible
    And if so, was that because the job tends to attract tough guys predisposed to violence?
    The belief that the positions of the planets and stars can influence people led to the word "disposition" which means "a characteristic tendency." People who are predisposed to violence have a disposition that makes them more likely to commit violent acts. Here, the author questions: Do tough guys become correction officers to have an outlet for their violent predispositions? Or do their dispositions become violent because they are correction officers who have to deal with violence every day?
  6. reinforce
    make stronger
    Puma reinforced my sense that the work was awful, that prison guards were the dentists of the law enforcement world.
  7. chafe
    feel extreme irritation or anger
    “I’d take a cut in pay for some more respect” was how he put it, still chafing that New York governor George Pataki had recently referred to his rank and file not as “correction officers” but as “prison guards”—as did most newspapers.
  8. stigma
    a symbol of disgrace or infamy
    Kingsley startled me by admitting that probably 90 percent of the officers he knew would tell strangers they met that they worked not in a prison but at something else—say, carpentry—because the job carried such a stigma.
  9. impart
    transmit, as knowledge or a skill
    Rick had told me about the Academy, and it seemed like a great subject to write about: the place where the values of the profession were first imparted, where guys from the sticks first learned the ways of the prison guard.
  10. tactics
    branch of military science dealing with detailed maneuvers
    We’d learn how to use a baton and how to fight hand to hand in a course called Defensive Tactics.
  11. simulate
    create a representation or model of
    Every task simulated an actual situation we might have to deal with as correction officers.
  12. altercation
    a noisy, angry argument or fight between people
    McCorkle pointed out overhead video cameras, which had been installed in prisons all around the state to provide a record of altercations and other incidents, and said we might be smart to remember where they were.
    The definition and Latin root ("altercari" means "to contend with words") suggest that an altercation is just an argument. And an "incident" is just "a single distinct event" or "a public disturbance." But in prison, these words describe more serious physical fights that could get inmates and officers hurt or in trouble.
  13. initiation
    a formal entry into an organization or position or office
    Instead, from a comment I heard from a portly CO with a candy bar sticking out of his shirt pocket—“How’d they like X-yard?”—it became clear that our taking the abuse out there was part of the initiation.
  14. consent
    permission to do something
    But he also shared with us his surprising view that even at the most tightly run prisons, “we rule with the inmates’ consent.”
  15. compliance
    acting according to certain accepted standards
    The requirements seemed pretty tough until you focused on the second-to-last one: “to enforce compliance with a lawful direction.”
    The chosen definition is what the word should mean in the example sentence, and the accepted standards should be those set down by the Department of Correctional Services. But the author realizes that some correction officers define compliance as "the act of submitting, usually surrendering power to another."
  16. arson
    malicious burning to destroy property
    Deadly physical force was okay to use in three instances: to prevent an escape; in self-defense; or to prevent arson.
  17. curriculum
    an integrated course of academic studies
    In one of the asides that probably prepared us for the job better than any of the approved curriculum items, Kirkley said that occasionally officers did have to act in self-defense.
  18. precedent
    a law system based on priory decisions by judges
    Another officer, Voltraw, taught us Legals, a class that involved mostly memorization—the difference between larceny third degree and larceny fourth degree, for example, and the legal precedents of Miranda warnings—but also informed us about the powers we were about to possess.
  19. liability
    the state of being legally obliged and responsible
    “There are liability issues, and actually, they’re unhappy that we can make arrests. But legally we can do almost as much as police officers.”
    A liability can also be "the quality of being something that holds you back." Both definitions are suggested by the example sentence. Because correction officers are considered "peace officers," they're not supposed to act like the police in enforcing the law. Legally, they can, but what holds them back is the possibility that the Department could be sued, in which case, they might be under another kind of liability: "an obligation to pay money to another party."
  20. rarefied
    having low density
    Corrections was, albeit in a rarefied macho way, a “people-skills” profession.
    The adjective also means "of high moral or intellectual value; elevated in nature or style." But this definition does not apply to the example sentence. Two clues are the conjunction "albeit" ("although it be that") and the adjective "macho" (which describes the appearance and behavior of men who need to prove that they are men). The definition used here can be traced to the Latin "rarefacere" which means "make rare or thin."
  21. effective
    producing or capable of producing an intended result
    By communicating effectively with inmates, Speros began, we could keep problems from escalating, build relationships with inmates, manage them better.
  22. calisthenics
    light exercises designed to promote general fitness
    Those who had trouble completing the unimaginative, unvaried course of calisthenics did not always agree, but I was ready for any break from the tedium of the classroom.
    "Calisthenics" and "tedium" ("the feeling of being bored by something") are not usually synonyms, but the example sentence gives them that relationship by describing the Academy's course of calisthenics as "unimaginative, unvaried." With more education than the rest of the recruits, the author finds that many of the Academy's classes are "sleep-inducers" that make him wish he were doing physically repetitive exercises.
  23. colleague
    a person who is member of one's class or profession
    Maybe he simply believed, along with a number of his colleagues, that abuse was a perfect preparation for prison work.
  24. prone
    lying face downward
    The instructor placed his boot on the chest of an imaginary prone inmate, pumped five times, then straightened up, looked down, and blew five times loudly toward the floor.
    The adjective also means "having a tendency" (compare with "predisposed" in this list). But that does not apply to the example sentence's description. The imaginary inmate is prone because he needs CPR. But in demonstrating how he would perform the CPR on an inmate, the instructor shows that he is prone to violence.
  25. practical
    concerned with actual use
    But the lecture and this small sampling paled in comparison to the main event of our chemical-agents education—the practical class.
  26. endure
    undergo or be subjected to
    Our afternoon on the range made more sense to me as a rite of passage that might bring us closer by making us feel we’d endured something awful together.
  27. rehabilitation
    the restoration of someone to a useful place in society
    Because in reality, he said, "rehabilitation is not our job. The truth of it is that we are warehousers of human beings.”
  28. peril
    a state of danger involving risk
    There’s the official line and then there’s what you really need to know, and the invaluable instructors are the ones who can cut through the crap and, perhaps at their peril, tell you the truth.
  29. denial
    the act of asserting that something alleged is not true
    At the same time, the Academy seemed to embrace an institutional denial that what we were being taught to do had a moral aspect.
  30. nomenclature
    a system of words used to name things in a discipline
    I only remember thinking it was strange to have spent so much time learning details about firearms (on our weekly test we were asked about the range of the different kinds of buckshot the Remington could fire, the direction in which the crossbolt safety button had to be pushed to enable the gun to fire, and a zillion questions of nomenclature) while never once being asked whether we thought we could shoot somebody.
  31. prelude
    something that introduces what follows
    Everything so far had been prelude: From what we’d been told, you could be a star at the Academy and then fall flat on your face inside a real prison.
  32. vulnerable
    capable of being wounded or hurt
    Best was to aim low—for the shins or for various vulnerable points in the torso, such as the lowermost (“floating”) rib.
  33. impromptu
    without advance preparation
    And they showed us how two partners could hold opposite ends of a baton to create an impromptu chair for an injured CO or inmate.
  34. diverse
    distinctly dissimilar or unlike
    Drawing from sources as diverse as aikido and barroom brawls, the instructors taught us ways to tangle with an attacking or resisting inmate that you weren’t likely to see in, say, a John Wayne movie.
  35. coerce
    cause to do through pressure or necessity
    This wasn’t about fistfights; it was about saving your ass in whatever way possible, or about coercing a misbehaving inmate in ways that wouldn’t cause death or other lasting damage.
  36. inventive
    marked by independence and creativity in thought or action
    We learned that if you could get hold of an inmate’s hand or wrist, several inventive ways of twisting it would drop him to the floor with you on top.
  37. disturbance
    a noisy fight
    Bloom told us the warning signs of prison disturbance: inmates stockpiling food in their cells, unnaturally quiet cell blocks, inmates wearing heavy clothes (often with magazines or newspapers tucked underneath, to deflect knife thrusts) in warm weather, inmates who were normally well behaved trying to get keeplocked so they wouldn’t have to mix with the general population.
    A disturbance can also be an "activity that is a malfunction, intrusion, or interruption" or "a disorderly outburst or tumult" or "an unhappy and worried mental state." All the definitions are suggested by the descriptions in the example sentence, but the possibility of a fight is the reason for all the other disturbances.
  38. verge
    the limit beyond which something happens or changes
    An officer on the verge of being held hostage should, if he could see it coming, get rid of his keys and radio, break the television sets (so inmates couldn’t watch the local news), and “destroy cutting torches if possible.”
  39. priority
    status established in order of importance or urgency
    But we had also learned that many D.A.’s saw attacks on correction officers as low-priority prosecutions, since the criminals were already in jail.
  40. proactive
    causing something to happen rather than waiting to respond
    The picture that emerged from all these images was of a group of men who could be only reactive, not proactive, and who spent day after day, as one officer said, “waiting for the other guy to take the first swing.”
Created on Tue Mar 31 14:53:37 EDT 2015 (updated Mon Oct 01 15:13:05 EDT 2018)

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