Corrections officers are real people faced with a difficult job the public will never see, author Ted Conover told about 60 people Monday while presenting his experience in participatory journalism as part of the Crain Lecture Series in Fisk Hall.

“I was told on my last day of training at the (corrections officer) academy that ‘You’re the zoo-keeper now. Go run the zoo,'” said Conover, a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine and The New Yorker.

Conover has spent years writing about his first-hand experiences, which have focused mainly on lower-income groups. His latest book, “Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing,” details the grueling life of new prison guards, or newjacks. The novel was a result of 10 months spent undercover as a prison guard at the Sing Sing Prison in New York state.

“Newjack” comprises notes he wrote daily upon returning home. It contains quotations from anonymous officers and inmates and vivid details from each day. He describes the months of separation many officers suffer from their families in hope of a promotion from being “$23,600 baby sitters.”

Conover’s interest was sparked when prisons repeatedly denied him access to cover the life of a corrections officer.

“I was looking for a perspective that wasn’t usually presented and a story that journalists may forget to consult when writing,” he said. “I wanted to understand what this job was like. In New York, where thousands of men are incarcerated each year, (prison life) is an important part of life that (costs taxpayers) $1.3 billion each year.”

But because of the restricted access journalists in New York had to prisons, Conover said he felt justified in going undercover for the project.

“It ought to be transparent and this was the only way to get to it,” he said.

Conover said he applied for the job truthfully, admitting to having been a freelance writer and taxi driver. But he never mentioned his intentions to write about his experience.

Once inside the prison, Conover was struck by the dangers and reality of the job.

“It’s a job that changes the people who work it,” he said. “I had been to prisons and visiting rooms before but did not fully understand (the life). In prison you take grown men and treat them like children, and they start acting like that. … It is a very peculiar world.”

He described the deep-seated fear in the officers that the “badness will seep out” and invade their personal lives.

Conover recounted the story he had heard of an officer being threatened by an inmate with gang connections. The following day, the officer mysteriously found on his desk pictures of his daughter on a swing. This is the type of story officers fear every day and night, he said.

In another case, Conover described feeling guilt about being “part of the punishment” of a 60-year-old inmate who was later found innocent of rape through DNA testing. The man’s confession was “deeply unnerving” to Conover long afterward, he said.

Corrections officers, who are not allowed to carry weapons, are often faced with intimidating situations where two officers monitor about sixty inmates. They joke about having a high rate of heart disease and divorce, he said.

“There is a running joke about us that when you graduate from the academy you receive a badge, a loan for a new car and a divorce,” he said.

Relations between officers and inmates were an important aspect of Conover’s book. Officers are not told why inmates are in prison. Similarly, officers are supposed to keep their personal information private, including first names, he said.

Though Conover tried like most officers to separate the lines between work and home, he found “protecting what is clean in life from that which is dirty” a challenging task.

“My transition period daily was the hour or two of notes I wrote to unburden myself to try to return to my life,” he said.

Conover said he also tried to maintain distance from his fellow officers by not developing personal relationships.

“The psychology is very different when you lead a secret life,” he said. “I did not want to tell a lie or get too invasive and did not get into the depth of a (corrections officer’s) personal life. There were definite tradeoffs because I’m a believer in full disclosure.”

Many audience members didn’t know about Conover’s work prior to his lecture and said they were interested in reading his book.

“As an actor, I’ve always been interested in (participatory journalism). Taking on someone else’s role is logical, though at times it is inaccessible to get an eyewitness account. He proves that it can happen,” said Speech junior Leah Wagner.

“He was very interesting because he talked about something you don’t normally hear about and took the initiative of going into prison and representing the other side,” said Jack Newman, a retired senior citizen and Skokie resident.