AUTHOR''S NOTE This is a work of nonfiction, describing events that I witnessed and participated in. No scenes are imaginary or made up, though some dialogue was, of necessity, re-created. Like all officers, I kept a small spiral notebook in my breast pocket for note-taking; unlike most of them, I took many notes. Most of the individuals in the book are identified by their real names. But to protect the privacy of certain officers and inmates, I have made up the following names for real people: Aragon , Rufino, Van Essen, Antonelli, Hawkins, Gaines, Foster, Wickersham, Perch, Arno, Chilmark, Pacheco, Dobbins, Duncan, Scarff, Bella, St. George, Saline, McCorkle , Birch, Pitkin, Popish, Massey, Lopez, Dieter , Phelan, De Los Santos, Di Carlo, Perlstein, Garces, DiPaols, Billings, Riordan, Speros, Mendez, Delacruz, Malaver, Larson, Perez, Fay, Blaine, Addison, L''Esperance, Sims, Blaine, Michaels, Astacio. CHAPTER 1 INSIDE PASSAGE Six-twenty a.m.
and the sun rises over a dark place. Across the Hudson River from Sing Sing prison, on the opposite bank, the hills turn pink; I spot the treeless gap in the ridgeline where, another officer has told me, inmates quarried marble for the first cellblock. Nobody could believe it back in 1826: a work crew of convicts, camping on the riverbank, actually induced to build their own prison. They had been sent down from Auburn, New York State''s famous second prison, to construct Sing Sing, its third. How would that feel, building your own prison? That 1826 cellblock still stands, on the other side of the high wall I park against; the prison has continued to grow all around it. In 1984, the roof burned down. At the time, the prison was using the building as a shop to manufacture plastic garbage bags, but as late as 1943, it still housed inmates. Sometimes now when inmates complain about their six-by-nine cells, I tell them how it used to be: two men sharing a three-and-a-half-by-seven-foot cell, one of them probably with TB, no central heating or plumbing, open sewer channels inside, little light.
They look unimpressed. I park next to my friend Aragon, of the Bronx, who always puts The Club on his steering wheel; I see it through his tinted glass. This interests me, because, with a wall tower just a few yards away, this has got to be one of the safest places to leave your car in Westchester County. Nobody''s going to steal it here. But Aragon is a little lock-crazy: He has screwed a tiny hasp onto his plastic lunch box and hangs a combination lock there, because of the sodas he''s lost to pilfering officers, he says. Between the Bronx and prison, a person could grow a bit lock-obsessed. There''s no one else around. Most people park in the lots up the hill, nearer the big locker room in the Administration Building.
But it''s almost impossible for a new officer to get a locker in there, so I park down here by the river and the lower locker room. The light is dim. Gravel crunches under my boots as I head into the abandoned heating plant. This six-story brick structure is one of those piles of slag that give Sing Sing its particular feel. Massive, tan, and almost windowless, it looks like a hangar for a short, fat rocket. The whole thing is sealed off, except for a repair garage around the corner and a part of the first floor containing men''s and women''s locker rooms and rest rooms. The men''s locker room-I''ve never seen the women''s-is itself nearly abandoned; though it''s stuffed with a hodgepodge of some two hundred lockers of inmate manufacture, fewer than twenty are actively used. The rest have locks on them, some very ancient indeed, belonging to officers who quit or transferred or died or who knows what.
Nobody keeps track. An old wall phone hangs upside down by its wires on the left as you enter, the receiver dangling by its curly cord, a symbol of Sing Sing''s chronically broken phone system. Cobwebs, in here, find a way onto your boots. For a few weeks following my arrival, on Aragon''s advice I checked the room for lockers that might have opened up. None ever did. All those unused lockers needlessly tied up. This might not be a problem for the officers who drive to work from the north, but down south in the Bronx (I live there, too) you don''t want to advertise that you''re a correction officer: Too many people around you have been in prison. Officers tend not to stick the big badge decals they pass out at the Academy on their car windows (because they like their windows), and most, like me, don''t want to walk the street wearing a uniform.
It''s just awkward. A locker lets you leave your uniform at work. My second month, I found one old lock that was so flimsy I could almost twist it off with my hands, but not quite. I brought in a small tire iron and it came off easily. Inside were plastic cups, magazine pictures of women in bikinis, and newspapers from 1983. I''ve since heard of a locker coming available in the Administration Building, but I''m not pursuing it. I''ve come to prefer it down here. The feel of neglect is somehow truer to the spirit of Sing Sing.
It''s barely fifteen minutes till lineup. I throw on my gray polyester uniform, making sure I''ve got all the things I need on my belt: radio holder, latex-glove packet, two key-ring clips, baton ring. I put pen and pad, inmate rulebook, and blue union diary in my breast pockets, slide my baton through the ring, lock the padlock, and slam the locker door. I walk past a pile of old office desks and, by necessity, into the men''s room. It smells like an outhouse. I sit down, for the second time this morning. Every morning is like this, and it is for the other new guys, too: Your stomach lets you know, just before the shift starts, what it thinks of this job. A decrepit footbridge takes me over the tracks of the Metro North railroad-Sing Sing may be the only prison anywhere with a commuter railroad running through it-and other officers start to appear.
My climb continues, up a wooden staircase that''s been built atop a crumbling concrete one. Here is the Administration Building parking lot, and the main entrance to the prison. Parked in the middle is the "roach coach," purveyor of coffee and rolls. To the right is the entrance to the Visit Room, not yet open. To the left, officers are lined up, waiting to deposit their handguns at the outside window of the Arsenal. For reasons lost to time, New York State correction officers are allowed to own and carry concealed weapons, and most seem to enjoy doing so. However, they can''t bring the guns inside with them (nobody is allowed to carry inside)-and few of us have any doubt that prison is the safer for it. I take the last steps to the main gate and flash the badge and I.
D. card I carry in a special wallet that I picked up at the Academy. The officer takes a cursory peek inside my lunch bag-the contraband check. I punch my time card and proceed to the morning''s worst moment, getting my assignment. The desk of Sergeant Ed Holmes is the focal point of the lineup room. It''s on a raised platform, in front of a window. From up there, Holmes can see everybody in the room and most of those ascending the front steps. His eyes are constantly scanning, never settling on any person or object for more than an instant, moving from an officer to the printout in front of him and back again.
The printout tells him what jobs he''ll need to fill-who''s on his day off, who''s got vacation, who''s out sick, who''s on suspension. He checks off old-timers as he sees them-they''ve chosen their jobs and know where they''re going. It''s the new guys, like me, who are at his mercy. Holmes is one of the tough black officers who have been here forever, a big man who seems to enjoy his distance from the rank and file. Several white-shirts spoke to us during orientation, mostly about how the institution runs. Holmes was different. He came only to warn: Don''t fuck with me, he said, glancing at the back wall of the room. I''m gonna give you your job assignment, and if you complain, I''ll give you a worse one tomorrow.
I have no "Okay, it''s been pretty quiet. They had one guy cut in the leg, in the tunnel from A-block yard. No weapon, no perp, the usual. Then we found three shanks buried in the dirt there in B-block yard, two of ''em metal, that we found with metal detectors. You think they''re just sitting around out there, but these crooks are always conniving." In other words: one inmate stabbed, assailant unknown, knife not found; three homemade knives found; no officers hurt. A fairly typical day. Then a new sergeant steps forward: "Remember, there''s no double clothing allowed during rec, for the obvious reasons.
Inmates with two shirts on or two sets of pants should be sent back to their cells and not allowed in the yard or gym." Double clothing is understood to be both a defense against getting "stuck" and a way of quickly changing your appearance if you stick someone else. Often we''ll hear a moral message at lineup, too: a warning that we''re not stepping up to the inmates enough or a caution that we need to watch one another''s backs better and know the names of the people we''re working with or a reminder that our job is "to get out of here in one piece at three PM-as if that needed saying. No such message today. There''s the schedule of driver''s-Ed courses, for anyone interested, and a reminder of next week''s blood drive, and the announcements are over. "Officers, a-ten-shun!" yells a sergeant. Everyone is quiet. "Posts!" And we''re off, not exactly at a run, through the long, rough corridors and up the hill to begin the day.
Sing Sing sprawls over fifty-five acres, most of it rocky hil.