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lounge and the mess hall. The Academy’s instructors were all correction officers with a training credential. Ours, luckily, was Vincent Nigro (“NY-gro,” he was careful to tell us), a CO from a downstate maximum-security prison called Eastern Correctional Facility. A jolly round man with a buzz cut, Nigro said that inmates had nicknamed him Abbott, after the partner of Costello. One of his training specialties was chemical agents, he said, explaining with a wink that “chemical agents make you fat.” He seated us alphabetically around the room—our session contained people with surnames from
A
to
F—
and then gave us a mock quiz. “What’s the first three things you get when you become a CO?” he asked. We waited. “A car. A gun. A divorce.”
    Thus began our education in the ways of the Academy. Our days would start before he arrived in this, our “homeroom,” Nigro said. Having left our dorm rooms spotless, we would gather in the classroom and check one another’s uniforms: collar brass had to be straight, name tag placed just so, a single pen in our breast pocket, wallet pocket buttoned, shoes perfectly shined. Then we’d proceed, silently and in single file, to the mess-hall queue. There was a prescribed way to turn corners: You had topivot on the ball of your inside foot, not interrupting your stride. Breakfast was to be eaten in silence. We’d regroup in the classroom at around seven forty-five and he’d be there by eight. Then, every day, two different officers would count the class, as if we were inmates, and present the completed count slip, along with a fire and safety report, to Sergeant Bloom. Nigro acknowledged that Bloom was a little scary and said he’d try to help us steer clear of him.
    Each instructor had a specialty, and Nigro explained that each would lecture us before we were through. The subjects would range from report writing to the use of force, from penal law to “standards of inmate behavior,” from tool and key control to drug awareness. There would be tests every Friday, on which we’d have to score 70 percent or better; if we didn’t, we could take the test only two more times. That, along with first aid and CPR, was the academic stuff. In addition, we’d have two hours of physical training—PT—every afternoon, and we’d have to pass a physical performance test in our last week. We’d learn how to use a baton and how to fight hand to hand in a course called Defensive Tactics. We’d have to qualify on a shooting range. Finally, we’d be exposed to tear gas (“CS gas” or “chemical agents,” they insisted on calling it) and learn how to fire gas guns.
    Among the things we could get fired for, Nigro advised, were arriving at the Academy late or drunk—once we were allowed to go out, that is—or, oddly enough, sleeping in class. I had thought one of the advantages of corrections work was the chance for a bit of shut-eye now and then. But Nigro said that if we felt ourselves falling asleep, we were to stand up and walk to the back of the class. In future days, the number of recruits trying to remain conscious against the back wall would be an accurate indicator of the deadly dullness of a given lecture.
    Nigro questioned the class, in roughly alphabetical order, about what we had done before coming to the Academy. The Antonelli brothers, handsome identical twins from the Buffalo area who were into bodybuilding, ran a landscaping business, which they had temporarily entrusted to their brother. Don Allen, one of three black men in the group, had worked in detention centers for the state’s Division for Youth (DFY). Tall and thin Aisha Foster, one of four black women, had been a guard at Rikers Island. Her Academy roommate, bubbly Tawana Ellerbe, had worked a clerical job for the New York City Police Department. Dave Arno, though he had a four-year-college degree and part of a master’s, had managed aBurger King, unable to find any other job in the Syracuse area.