Why am I passionate about this?
Stories of people impacted by the criminal justice system have been key to my understanding of the system and my efforts to reform it. I knew I wanted to be a civil rights lawyer when, in law school, I represented a woman who was raped by a corrections officer in a federal prison in Connecticut. My experiences suing the police and corrections officers as a young lawyer in New York inspired 15+ years researching the realities of civil rights litigation and barriers to achieve justice. I believe that the best way to understand the realities of the criminal justice system is through the experiences of people trying to make their way through it.
Joanna's book list on the human toll of the criminal justice system
Why did Joanna love this book?
Ted Conover, a journalist, wanted to better understand life as a corrections officer.
After Conover’s request to shadow a recruit at the New York State Corrections Officer Academy was denied, he decided to apply to become a corrections officer himself—and was hired.
Conover spent a year working as a corrections officer at Sing Sing, and his insights about the chaos, lack of training, and harsh culture at the institution—and the impact that serving as a corrections officer had on him psychologically and on relationships with his loved ones—were eye-opening.
1 author picked Newjack as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
After he was denied access to report on Sing Sing, one of America's most notorious high security jails, journalist Ted Conover applied to become a prison guard. As a rookie officer, or 'newjack', Conover spent a year in the unpredictable, intimidating and often violent world of America's penal system.
Unarmed and outnumbered, prison officers at one of America's toughest maximum security jails supervise 1,800 inmates, most of whom have been convicted of violent felonies: murder, manslaughter, rape. Prisoners conceal makeshift weapons to settle gang rivalries or old grudges, and officers are often attacked or caught in the crossfire. When violence…