Attica prison riot
The Attica prison riot was a significant event in U.S. history, occurring at the Attica Correctional Facility in New York in September 1971. Tensions had been escalating for months due to poor living conditions, leading inmates to express demands for better food, medical care, and improved treatment from guards. On September 9, a large-scale uprising erupted as over 1,200 inmates took control of the prison, resulting in the hostage-taking of guards and civilian staff. The confrontation lasted four days, during which the prisoners outlined a list of 28 demands, including calls for amnesty and better wages. However, negotiations faltered, and on September 13, state police intervened with deadly force, leading to the deaths of 42 people, including inmates and hostages. The aftermath of the riot brought national attention to the harsh conditions within prisons and led to reforms in inmate care and rights. The legacy of the Attica riot remains influential in discussions about prison reform and human rights within correctional facilities.
Attica prison riot
The Event: Large-scale uprising of inmates of a New York State prison
Date: September 9-13, 1971
Place: Attica Correctional Facility, Attica, New York
Significance: More than a thousand inmates in this maximum security prison, angry over prison conditions, took control of four of the five prison blocks and held forty hostages.
The unrest that became the Attica prison riot had been building for months prior to the outbreak of hostilities. A report of the New York Committee on Crime and Correction in January of 1971 warned of possible prison violence at Attica Correctional Facility. In June, a number of prisoners drafted a petition asking for better food and medicine and for better training for the guards, among other demands. The new correctional commissioner, Russell Oswald, began to move forward on the demands, and in early September, he outlined a series of reforms intended to address the problems identified by the prisoners. He asked that the prison population give him more time to put these changes into effect.
On Wednesday, September 8, however, two inmates were placed in solitary confinement for fighting. The next morning just before 9 a.m., twelve hundred prisoners rioted, overpowering the unarmed guards. During this initial breakout, twenty-eight guards were seized, along with eleven civilian employees. Quickly the hostages were herded to cell block D, which would become the prisoner stronghold for the next four days. Throughout the confrontation, Oswald played an active part, but the prisoners demanded and received a group of fifteen observers/negotiators consisting of people who were sympathetic to their cause. Because the committee had no real power to change any of the conditions, the demands had to be taken to Oswald and Prison Superintendent Vincent Mancusi.
Amnesty for all misdeeds was in every list of demands that was made. By Saturday, September 11, the inmates had a list of twenty-eight demands, including things such as wages, health care, education, food, and recreation. Commissioner Oswald agreed to support all the reforms he had the power to implement, except for two: amnesty and the ouster of Mancusi. Saturday evening things worsened when prison guard William Quinn died of injuries sustained during the initial uprising. There was now no chance of amnesty.
The Police Move In
At 9:46 a.m. on Sunday, under the cover of tear gas and rifle and shotgun fire, two hundred state police officers quickly subdued the prisoners. In what was the bloodiest confrontation in United States prison history, thirty inmates were killed outright, with another two hundred injured. Nine of the thirty-nine hostages were also killed by state police gunfire. A total of forty-two people died. Many of the reforms that the prisoners wanted were reasonable, and except for positions taken by some of the more extreme members of the convict leadership, the bloodbath might have been avoided. There was also some evidence that prison authorities had invented stories about harsh treatment of hostages in order to gain support for the Sunday police attack.
The battle lasted only four minutes, but the impact was felt through the entire correctional system. The public attention generated by the riot and deaths focused on the inhumane conditions that had existed at the prison. Food, hygiene, and medical care in prisons have generally been improved since 1971, and recreational and educational opportunities have been provided to many inmates. In 1974, a civil suit claiming civil rights violations and “cruel and unusual punishment” at the time the authorities retook the prison was filed by 1,281 Attica inmates. They sought $2.8 billion in damages. It took eighteen years for the case to come to trial. In 1992, a jury ruled that the constitutional rights of the inmates had been violated but exonerated three of the four former prison officials named in the suit, holding liable only Karl Pfeil, a deputy warden. In 2000, the state settled with claimants.
Bibliography
Berman, Eliza. "The Only Photographer Allowed at the Attica Prison Riot Remembers Four Days of Chaos." Time. Time, 9 Sept. 2015. Web. 24 May 2016.
Selke, W. A. Prisons in Crisis. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993.
Useem, Bert, and Peter Kimball. States of Siege: U.S. Prison Riots, 1971-1986. Reprint. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Wicker, Tom. A Time to Die: The Attica Prison Revolt. Reprint. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994.
Yuhas, Alan. "New Attica Documents Reveal Inmate Accounts of Torture after 1971 Prison Riot." Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 22 May 2015. Web. 24 May 2016.