In Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing journalist Ted Conover, who has a background in anthropology, goes undercover as a corrections officer to examine the United States prison system. The central problem with this analysis is that it is inherently subjective because the author documents his experience from the lens of the guard. In such a polarizing and negative power dynamic, a singular perspective shows a grossly inadequate representation of what happens in the institution and the circumstances that enable its perpetuation. This failure is evident in the author's personal transformation from the beginning to the end of the book. His writing becomes desensitized and he begins to see the prisoners as increasingly evil. While this type of first-hand journalism is admirable and provides interesting anecdotal evidence, it will never be able to fully examine the precise and intricate social, economic, and political conditions that are the root cause of the injustice that is our criminal justice system . Conover begins his investigative journey as he undergoes the training necessary to become a prison guard. The process that each potential Guardsman must graduate from closely resembles that used by the military. Perfectly made beds, matching uniforms, roll calls, shooting drills and psychological tests are all factored into prospective guards' schedules. When this realization hits the author, he says, “I realized I had shown up at boot camp.” The emphasis on uniformity and discipline clearly showed the correlation that those who controlled the prisons saw between prisons and war zones. Even the rhetoric is nearly identical, as evidenced by the "sergeant" stating, "The gray uniforms are the good guys, and the green uniforms are... the middle of the paper... the end." of the book believes that inmates are prone to violence and his sole purpose is to maintain order in a dehumanized group. It's far-fetched to ask someone like Conover to become an inmate, but I think his perspective would be insightful. In writing the book Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing, Conover undergoes a transformation as a correctional officer to expose the problems within our prison systems. The reader learns a lot about what is happening in prisons right now and what it means to be a guard, but in summary what needs to be taken into account is that prisons don't have to be like this. There are social, political and economic realities that have built this system and to dispel them it is more useful to understand these factors rather than the experience of one man in a place of power in a prison.