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Bill Berkowitz for BuzzFlash: 50 Years After The Attica Prison Rebellion, Prison Conditions Are As Bad As Ever

Inmates occupying "D" Yard during the Attica Prison uprising (New York State Archives)

September 14, 2021

By Bill Berkowitz

"With the exception of Indian massacres in the late 19th century, the ... assault [on the Attica Correctional Facility] which ended the four-day prison uprising was the bloodiest one-day encounter between Americans since the Civil War."— New York State Special Commission on Attica, 1972.

September 9 marks the 50th anniversary of the start of the 1971 prisoner rebellion at the Attica Correctional Facility, located in western New York. After four days of negotiating, Gov. Nelson Rockefeller ended what appeared to be productive sessions by ordering 1,000 National Guardsmen, prison guards, and state and local police to storm the facility, resulting in 39 deaths (29 prisoners and 10 hostages). The hostages who were killed did not die at the hands of the prisoners; they were all slain by law enforcement.

Justice was much longer in coming. "In 2000, 27 years after the lawsuit was filed, the state of New York agreed to pay $12 million to settle the case," the Huffington Post’s David Lohr wrote in 2012. "The state also recognized the families of the slain prison employees in 2004, with a $12 million settlement."

So where do things stand today? Did the Attica Rebellion lead to improvements in America’s prison system?

Rockefeller’s raid

First, some history.

"Nearly half of Attica prison's approximately 2,200 [prisoners] rebelled and seized control of the prison,” Lohr wrote. “Some were angry over the death of an African American activist at another prison, while others revolted because they were unhappy with the brutal living conditions inside Attica." Those conditions included rampant racist behavior among the prison guards, horrific hygienic conditions, and virtually non-existent medical care.

Rockefeller’s deadly raid began with the dropping of CS gas to put everyone on the ground, followed by the indiscriminate firing of 4,500 rounds of ammunition, all aimed at essentially unarmed people. The raid also did not end the brutality: "Guards beat and tortured prisoners after the revolt, resulting in a wave of prison rebellions nationwide," Scott A. Bonn, a crime expert and assistant professor of sociology at Drew University, told Lohr.

It also sparked a long-time tradition at Attica itself, this year made more poignant because of the anniversary. As Democrat & Chronicle’s Gary Craig recently reported that  over the years, “there have been many … remembrances of the Attica uprising — there are annual memorial services at the prison — but this one has brought a resonance unlike most others.” 

Many books have been written, reports have been filed, and this year there are at least three documentaries about the riot. One titled Attica, by acclaimed filmmaker Stanley Nelson, will kick off the Toronto Film Festival and be shown on Showtime. And, though the pandemic will surely limit some travels, dozens of people whose lives were forever impacted by the riot are expected at this year's memorial which will be September 13..

For prisoners, 50 years after Attica, rebellion continues to be  “their only grievance system.”

According to the Center for Constitutional Rights, “The Attica rebellion played a foundational role in the development of today’s anti-prison movements. The uprising may have brought awareness to prison conditions, but how far have we really come in five decades? The prison population has grown from about 300,000 in 1970 to more than 2.4 million today,” – an eight-fold increase during the same time the U.S. population grew by little more than one third (from 203 million to 330 million).

Fifty years after Attica, prisoners across the country still suffer under despicable conditions. A disastrous response to COVID-19 “left prisons and jails utterly ravaged,” Yahoo! News’  Heather Ann Thompson recently reported. “There has been no way for those on the inside to isolate from, nor to care for, those who are sick from the virus, and their mortality rate is significantly higher than that of the general population. In federal and state prisons, according to the UCLA Law COVID Behind Bars Data Project, there have been 199.6 deaths per 100,000 people, compared with 80.9 in the total U.S. population.”

According to Thompson, “It happened in January, inside California’s Santa Clara County jails. In April of last year, it happened at the Westville Correctional Facility in Indiana. It happened two separate times this year alone at the St. Louis City Justice Center. American prisoners erupted, many often refusing to go back to their cells until they were heard. As one man who had spent months confined to the notorious facility in Missouri told a journalist, rebellion is ‘their only grievance system.’”

Thompson, a professor at the University of Michigan, and the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy noted that despite some protections initiated after the Attica rebellion, prison conditions generally remain horrific:

“Yet in 2021, and not just as a result of COVID-19, the incarcerated across the country still somehow find themselves much sicker than they need to be, dying unnecessarily painful as well as early deaths. According to journalist Keri Blakinger’s investigation for the Marshall Project, correctional systems often hire people to provide care who have few if any qualifications, or even licenses that have been restricted or suspended. And because they can’t afford the usurious co-pays many prison systems now require, many prisoners who are ill can’t even see the doctor to begin with.

“Much of prison health care is now privatized, aimed at profits. This means not just billing practices totally unsuited to a prison population, but also the denial of lifesaving procedures. That medical abuses related to privatization are a regular occurrence behind bars is corroborated by the physicians themselves, according to the ACLU. As one Arizona doctor who was expected to provide care for more than 5,000 people revealed, not only were her requests for consults with a specialist always denied, because ‘it costs too much money,’ but she also regularly ran out of prisoners’ medications.”

In 1971, Attica’s prisoners railed against the practice of solitary confinement, to no avail. Yahoo! News’ Thompson reported that “since 1971, the capricious and excessive use of solitary confinement has only intensified in America’s prisons. Over the past decade, the limited data that outsiders have been able to get out of correctional institutions revealed that between 60,000 and 90,000 Americans were in a solitary confinement cell—but the actual number was likely higher. Whether in segregation for ‘administrative,’ ‘disciplinary’ or ‘protective’ reasons, to be in complete isolation for 22 to 24 hours a day, for days, months and years on end is unequivocally understood to be a form of torture, by the U.N., Amnesty International and numerous medical bodies.”

Transparency is not one of the strong suits of prison authorities. Women in prison are routinely sexually abused. Juvenile facilities are hellholes of abuse and cruelty. Overcrowding is routine. Thompson pointed out that “in 2021, every barrier to the use of prison labor that had been in place in 1971 has been eliminated, and there are more than a million more people behind bars available to work for little to no money than there were back then.” 

Fifty years ago, the Attica Rebellion shined a much-needed national spotlight on contemptible and shameful conditions inside America’s prisons. A robust prison reform movement was launched. Unfortunately, now, 50 years later, while many of these same conditions continue to exist, the spotlight has been turned off. Few people are listening. We owe it to those who died at Attica to help them once again be heard.

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