This is a recent history of the Attica Prison uprising, some of its root causes, and decades-worth of aftermath. I wasn’t alive for Attica, and so it was mostly a cultural meme in my lifetime, but specifically its use in the Sydney Lumet movie “Dog Day Afternoon” with Al Pacino calling out “Attica! Attica!” as a (fake) rallying cry. That’s the way I’ve generally understood it.
The uprising itself stemmed out a handful of predictable causes. Inmates had been agitating for a while from several kinds of mistreatment at the prison for a long time prior to the events. Their list includes physical and sexual violence (from guards and other inmates), censorship, lack of rehabilitation programs, Byzantine legal procedures for basic rights, no protection from the elements (upstate New York is dreadfully cold in the winter, and can be very hot at times in the summer), bad food, and lack of necessary medical care. It reached a boiling point and a group of inmates fought back, locking down a large section of the prison, leading to a more general occupation. There were a handful of hostages including corrections officers and other prison staff among them, and early on a corrections officer was severely beaten and he later died from his injuries, there was a serious sexual assault, and a small number of inmates dies early on (possibly/likely from other inmates’ violence).
In the coming hours, the inmates adopted a kind of leadership which began to negotiate demands. The demands started off linked to larger political movements or possibly to grandiose ideas of what could be achieved, and during the next couple days, with the help of legal advisers who volunteered to enter the prison, came up with a list of demands as requirements for surrender. These mostly included quality of life changes, access to legal aid, and other pragmatic ideas. The negotiation reached a stand still. In the meantime, outside the prison several things were occurring. Political and media pressure (as well as pressure from the local community) began ramping up. There was a kind of open call for law enforcement in New York to visit the prison and offer assistance, and this brought in people both connected and unconnected to the local community and state police, and the hostages within. Rumors started swirling, tensions started heating up, and while this book does not mention this, I have to imagine there were other factors like alcohol involved. In addition, outside negotiators/observers like Bobby Seale got involved, and the book suggests these ended up not being super helpful, as the local situation was tied to more international ideas, which were unworkable. The spark came with the death of the corrections officer beaten in the early hours of the uprising. This led to governor Nelson Rockefeller ordering the retaking of the prison. Those partaking (from all different kinds of law enforcement agencies) were handed firearms like shotguns and rifles, brought personal weapons, and used the weapons caches of the prison. Records were not only not kept, but were actively suppressed to keep track of the weapons. For example, today, in most police forces, individual rounds are serial numbered and accounted for. And because of the use of shotguns, especially with shot, those rounds are not only very dangerous in crowds, but are completely unaccountable.
They stormed the prison, and in the ensuing mayhem (which often included acts of revenge and anger more than stability), 33 inmates were killed (or later died) and ten hostages. Rumors were swirling that the hostages’ throats were cut before the raid, which was a lie that even the governor told.
The book then dives into the four significant legal battles afterward. One, the investigations into the facts, which was already a political football, was a fraught battle. Two, criminal charges against the inmates, where the cases were purposely full of lies and compromises witness accounts. Three, the possibility of charging the cops who raided the facility with crimes, which basically did not happen in part because of a top-down conspiracy to suppress all evidence. And four, the civil liability cases from the inmates first, and the families of the hostages second.
The case overall speaks to an infuriating series of injustices in which those in power were purposely hurting prisoners, then wantonly killed both prisoners and hostages, and then spent untold resources on defending their actions, protecting the state from culpability, and covering up the events. There’s a deeply disturbing set of events in which the state would send checks to surviving families of hostages labeled like “refund of meal allowances” and the cashing of those checks (which would be for like $20) would be used to deny civil claims because of an “elective award” even where families were lied to in order to get the paperwork signed.
The other element that is very important to take through this whole case is the rampant and disturbing racism and White Supremacy that runs through almost every single element of the case. Anti-Black, Anti-Native American, and Anti-Latino racism seeps through everything from the policies to the abuse to the violence to the injustice. It’s a good reminder for everyone who lives in states that are not former Confederate states to not assume that because you can’t see the racism embedded within everything that it’s not there. In addition, while there have been a limited number of similar prison uprisings, it’s hard to feel good about things as they are. These events predate much of mass incarceration (though not entirely), and for a lot of people, things are much worse now. The biggest difference seems to be the ways in the state has learned to protect itself from the kinds of headlines it doesn’t want.