Comments for Crossing the line at http://inthefray.org , comment 1 to 4 out of 4 comments http://inthefray.org Wed, 19 Nov 2008 12:06:34 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.2 http://inthefray.org/content/view/2746/227/#comment-3136 Xochitl, reading Newjack would change your mind. In the book he acknowledges all the horror; he gets the job so as to be in a position to witness it. A CO is morally compromised from the word go, Conover is too, and that's the subtext to the whole thing--the ethically tenuous position a person is placed in who would guard other human beings in cages. In the book he refers to the certainty that innocent people are incarcerated, so the quote's a little off--I think what he means is he never thought he personally would be incarcerating one. - William Sun, 14 Sep 2008 17:45:26 +0100 http://inthefray.org/content/view/2746/227/#comment-2990 Conover is an educated man who had enough of an interest in prison to go into Sing Sing as a guard, yet he had no idea there were innocent people there? I find his knowledge base selective and his methods unethical. - Xochitl Wed, 07 May 2008 01:21:42 +0100 http://inthefray.org/content/view/2746/227/#comment-2989 I read that book and it infuriated me: Conover's nightmares are well-deserved, I don't care if he looks like a priest or not. There are sections of that book in which Conover participates passively and not so passively in the brutality going on around him. His book did little if anything to add to the body of prison literature in the United States. It was a futile exercise in self-aggrandizement, and in the process, people were injured. I have no sympathy for Conover. The ones who deserve our sympathy are his victims (the prisners of Sing Sing). - Karla Wed, 07 May 2008 01:01:23 +0100 http://inthefray.org/content/view/2746/227/#comment-2986 I found this entire article to be incredibly fascinating. The students' reluctance to see how someone so nice could do something so out of character seems to be a central point - what Conover did, in essence, is show the potential within all of us, and also the inherent need to find safety in a group. As an ex-pat preparing to return home, I've been in a moment of reflection where I too try to understand how I've changed and why, which of these changes were superficial (and perhaps too easy) and due to social survival and which were a process of learning, etc. There is so much within each one of us that could go wonderfully right or horribly wrong. Abdal's case is saddening; all the same, I hope that someday Conover realizes that it was a failing of the justice and not a penitentiary system guard (or journalist guard) that put him in that position. Really enlightening work. I look forward to reading the book! Thank you. - Courtney Tue, 06 May 2008 20:26:10 +0100