Pam Cross, Instructor Office: J-105i; office phone: 609-652-4899 (x4899); cell: 609-442-2293
e-mail: course blog: https://blogs.stockton.edu/cross2014/
Assignments for Monday, April 21:
Please continue reading New Jack, by Ted Conover. Please read Chapter 3, “Up the River,” page 57 – 93:
1. Why is Sing Sing referred to as “up the river”? (57)
2. What is “location pay”? (57)
3. What was the author thinking on his first day at work at Sing Sing? (58)
4. Explain this quotation from page 59, “I was nervous but excited . . .”
5. Why is Sing Sing like a training facility? (60)
6. Familiarize yourself with some statistics about the inmates on page 61.
7. What did the rookie officers learn in the film Games Inmates Play? (62-63)
8. How the author describe the feeling of the hallways near housing unit A?
9. What was “Old Sparky”? (66)
10. How was Tappan different from Sing Sing max? (67)
11. What are some of the guidelines supposed to be enforced at Sing Sing? What were some of the ones frequently ignored? (68-69)
12. Explain the author’s analogy: “Our main problem, it seemed to me, was that the state had certified us as lion tamers before ever leaving us alone in a cage with a lion.” (page 69-70)
13. Describe the “pandemonium” that sets in as the inmates returned from chow (page 71). What does the scene remind you of (lots of possible answers)?
14. Read pages 72 – 79, which describes the author’s job in detail. Prepare to discuss the stressfulness of the job in class. How long do you think you would last?
15. Explain the author’s line, “Keys were power.” (80) How did the author nearly cause disaster with his keys?
16. How does the author think he is handling prison work so far? How is his ability to handle a crisis different in prison than in his personal life? (page 82-83)
17. Why does Martinez tell the author to watch out for inmates carrying more than they should be in Tappan? (83)
18. Who is Dr. Charles Friedgood? (83)
19. What happened to Martinez one day when he has stopped an inmate passing through the gate? Why was the training officer angry about the incident? (84)
20. What happens the next day that gives the author a sense of pride? (84-85)
21. Why won’t Officer St. George tell the author what town he’s from? (85)
22. Describe St. George’s attitude about the inmates (hint: it’s not a simple answer). (85-86)
23. How was Sing Sing different than other New York prisons in terms of how inmates treated COs? Why do you think this is? (86-87)
24. Why did Officer Smith succeed when other officers did not? (87 – 92: Read these pages carefully.)
25. What does Smith tell the author about some of the inmates? (88-89)
26. Contrast Smith’s attitude toward greeting inmates with McCorkle’s. (92)
27. Explain the context for the quotation from page 93, referring to the kind of CO the author wanted to be: “Somewhere between those poles lay the way I wanted to be.”
28. How does the author respond when he hears the story of an inmate getting beaten by COs as payback for assaulting an officer? How does he think he would have reacted a month ago? Why the change? (93)