Cultural Diversity and Correctional Facilities

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Attica Prison Riot

Attica was a maximum security prison in New York designed for 1500 people, constructed during the early years of the Great Depression. By 1971, there were well over 2300 prisoners there. Prisoners stayed in their cells most of the day. They received one shower a week. The prisoners claimed they weer "treated like animals" by the system as a whole.

The riot was based on a political movement that had been created within the prison, the Attica Liberation Front, who liberally used Marxist and Maoist slogans like old pros. That seems strange in itself, since there was no radical literature permitted in the prison. The conditions of the prison were merely a pretext for the demands. The demands the prisoners made, or at least the ALF, were aimed at society as a whole (Buckley, 1971).

Ultimately, the AFL took about 40 guards hostage and threatened to kill them if their demands were not met. Nelson Rockefeller, governor of new York, ordered a raid on the prison that killed 36 people all together and wounded about 100. Several of the dead were guards (Buckley, 1971).

This became a "victory for the left" in William Kuntsler's words, and was entirely politicized from the start. In a manner of speaking, Kuntsler, advocate for the prisoners, made it plain that Attica was a dress rehearsal for what he and his friends had in store for the US (Langum, 1999).

Slides can be constructed from here.

The so-called Attica Liberation Front was formed, a violent, "communist" cell within the prison that plotted revenge against the guards and the prison system as a whole. They offered the governor 27 demands. This was called the Attica Manifesto and was written in the Summer of 1971. (Buckley, 1971)

They denied that they were criminals and were all "framed" for their crimes. They defined "crime" as arbitrarily labeled "deviant" behavior. They blamed "society" at large for their plight. This is significant to mention because it makes sense out of their list of demands. Since they viewed themselves as normal American citizens who had ...