8. Russell Oswald, Memorandum to Rockefeller, Subject: “Activities Report—October 1, 1971–October 31, 1971,” Rockefeller Archive Center.
9. Ibid.
10. Paul Montgomery, “Attica Prisoners Have Gained Most Points Made in Rebellion,” New York Times, September 12, 1972.
11. “Since Attica: The Past Year of Penal Reform,” Government Document, April 19, 1973, New York Public Library.
12. Ibid.
13. On training COs better: New York State Department of Correctional Services, Program: “Orientation Training for Correction Officers,” New York State Police Academy, Albany, New York, December 6–23, 1971, Investigation and interview files, 1971–1972, New York (State), Special Commission on Attica, 15855-90, Box 93, New York State Archives, Albany, New York.
14. For information on this large conference for prison reform, see: “After Attica—What?,” Program, New York State Conference on Prison Reform, Binghamton, New York, November 5–6, 1971, Senator Jacob A. Javits Collection, Box 6, Special Collections and University Archives, Frank Melville Jr. Memorial Library, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York. Information in this collection also on a “National Conference on Prisoner Rights” in Chicago post-Attica. For other post-Attica events, actions, and organizations, see: Michele Hays, “The New York Prison System—A Generation After Attica,” Verdict: National Coalition of Concerned Legal Professionals 7, no. 3 (July 2001).
15. Hazel Erskine, “The Polls: Politics and Law and Order,” Public Opinion Quarterly 38, no. 4 (Winter 1974–1975).
16. Letters, Time, October 4, 1971.
17. For information on the American Correctional Association study and report, “New Type of Prisoner,” see: Robert Gruenberg, draft news story, Chicago Daily News, 1971, Dorothy Schiff Papers, Box 4, New York Public Library.
18. Ibid.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid.
21. Peter Kihss, “Prison Leaders in 8 States Support Assault at Attica,” New York Times, September 16, 1971.
22. Michael T. Kaufman, “Oswald Seeking Facility to House Hostile Convicts,” New York Times, September 29, 1971.
23. Ibid.
24. Fred Ferretti, “Facility for Militants Urged,” New York Times, September 23, 1971.
25. Ibid.
26. Monies had already been flowing to American cities for more punitive policing and to expand prisons thanks to the Law Enforcement Assistance Act of 1965 and the Safe Streets Act of 1968, but the bulk of funding for what became the largest criminal justice system in American history also postdates this rebellion.
27. Richard L. Madden, “US Will Study Charges of Mistreatment at Attica,” New York Times, October 21, 1971.
28. For more on the origins of the Rockefeller drug laws, see: Julilly Kohler Hausmann, “The Attila the Hun Law: New York’s Rockefeller Drug Laws and the Making of a Punitive State.” Journal of Social History 44, no. 1 (2010): 71–95. Also her forthcoming book with Princeton University Press on this same subject. For more on the drug wars of other decades, see: Matthew Lassiter, “Impossible Criminals: The Suburban Imperatives of America’s War on Drugs,” Journal of American History 102, 110, 1 (2015), 126–140; Donna Murch, “Crack in Los Angeles: Crisis, Militarization, and Black Response to the Late Twentieth-Century War on Drugs,” Journal of American History 102, no. 1 (2015): 162–73.
29. Madison Gray, “A Brief History of the Rockefeller Drug Laws,” Time, April 2, 2009.
30. Being homeless, for example, had not, until this punitive turn, been regarded by law enforcement as inherently leading to criminal acts. Increasingly over the last four decades, laws have been passed that have made it a crime for homeless people to sleep in public spaces or to panhandle. Other acts once considered merely antisocial, such as spitting or urinating in public, also began to lead to arrest. For more on this new level of criminalization, see: “Criminalizing Crisis: The Criminalization of Homelessness in U.S. Cities,” a report by the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty, November 2011. Also see: Charles G. Koch and Mark V. Holden, “The Overcriminalization of America,” Politico.com, January 7, 2015.
31. Michael Isikoff, “Bush Promises Veto of Crime Bill,” Washington Post, September 13, 1990.
32. Ibid.
33. Christopher J. Mumola and Allen J. Beck, “Prisoners in 1996,” Bureau of Justice Statistics Bulletin, June 1997, NCJ 164619.
34. Prisoner Rights Primer: Syllabus, Justice 294, Dr. Tom O’Connor, North Carolina Wesleyan College.
35. The history of America’s punitive turn in the latter third of the twentieth century is much larger than Attica—although the Attica rebellion, and as important the state’s response to it, very much fueled and solidified that turn. As I have argued previously, the War on Crime, which would, in turn, lead to the War on Drugs and to the United States incarcerating more of its population than any other country, began in 1965 when President Lyndon Johnson created the Office of Law Enforcement Administration and passed the Law Enforcement Administration Act. Historians have begun to flesh out the contours of the carceral state and we continue to learn more about why this nation embraced such harsh penal policies after 1965, why it became the world’s largest jailer, and what this punitive turn meant for our communities, our economy, and our very democracy. See: Heather Ann Thompson, “Why Mass Incarceration Matters: Rethinking Urban Crisis, Labor Decline, and Political Transformation in Postwar America,” The Journal of American History (December 2010). Also see the powerful essays on the history of the carceral state in special issues of the Journal of American History edited by Heather Ann Thompson, Khalil Gibran Mohammad, and Kelly Lytle Hernández (June 2015) and the Journal of Urban History edited by Heather Ann Thompson and Donna Murch (Fall 2015). Also see recent new comprehensive histories of the origins of the carceral state such as Elizabeth Kai Hinton, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016); Naomi Murakawa, The First Civil Right: How Liberals Built Prison America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014); Marie Gottschaulk, Caught: The Prison State and the Lockdown of American Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014); Dennis Childs, Slaves of the State: Black Incarceration from the Chain Gang to the Penitentiary (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015); and Kelly Lytle Hernández, City of Inmates: Conquest and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, forthcoming).
36. John Lennon wrote “Attica State” in 1971 and released it on his Some Time in New York City album that same year. Sidney Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon came out in 1975. Decades later see: “C.I.A. (Criminals in Action)” by KRS-One, Zack De La Rocha, and the Last Emperor; see the thirteenth episode of season one of The Sopranos, “I Dream of Jeannie Cusamano”; and see the episode of SpongeBob called “Missing Identity.”
37. For more on the ways in which prison gerrymandering in the age of incarceration has distorted America’s democracy by counting the bodies of black prisoners who can’t vote as census population, which, in turn, increases the voting power of whites, see: Heather Ann Thompson, “How Prisons Change the Balance of Power in America,” The Atlantic, October 7, 2003, https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/10/how-prisons-change-the-balance-of-power-in-america/280341/. Also see the myriad reports on this phenomenon done by the Prison Policy Initiative, http://www.prisonersofthecensus.org/.
38. For more on this history of criminalization of black spaces in the South after the Civil War as well as disfranchisement and convict leasing, see: Edward L. Ayers, Vengeance and Justice: Crime and Punishment in the 19th-Century American South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984); Mary Ellen Curtin, Black Prisoners and Their World, Alabama, 1865–1900 (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2000); Alex Lichtenstein, Twice the Work of Free Labor: The Political Economy of Convict Labor in the New South (New York: Verso, 1996); David M. Oshinsky, “Worse Than Slavery”: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice (New York: Free Pr
ess, 1997); Karin Shapiro, A New South Rebellion: The Battle Against Convict Labor in the Tennessee Coalfields, 1871–1896 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998); Talitha L. LeFlouria, Chained in Silence: Black Women and Convict Labor in the New South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015); Robert Perkinson, Texas Tough: The Rise of America’s Prison Empire (New York: Picador, 2010); Sarah Haley, No Mercy Here: Gender, Punishment, and the Making of Jim Crow Modernity (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2016). On the criminalization of black spaces in the North and West, see: Kali Nicole Gross, Colored Amazons: Crime, Violence, and Black Women in the City of Brotherly Love, 1880–1910 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006); Khalil Gibran Muhammad, The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011); Cheryl Hicks, Talk with You Like a Woman: African-American Women, Justice, and Reform in New York, 1890–1935 (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2010); Donna Jean Murch, Living for the City: Migration, Education, and the Rise of the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2010); Kelly Lytle Hernández, Migra!: A History of the U.S. Border Patrol (Oakland: University of California Press, 2010); Miroslava Chávez-García, States of Delinquency: Race and Science in the Making of California’s Juvenile Justice System (Oakland: University of California Press, 2012).
39. Paige M. Harrison and Allen J. Beck, “Prisoners in 2005,” Bureau of Justice Statistics Bulletin, US Department of Justice, November 2006, NCJ 215092; “Race and Hispanic Origin in 2005,” Population Profile of the United States, US Census Bureau.
40. For two of the most important books on felon disfranchisement in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, see: Pippa Holloway, Living in Infamy: Felon Disfranchisement and the History of American Citizenship (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013); and Jeffery Manza and Chris Uggens, Locked Out: Felon Disenfranchisement and American Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).
41. For more on the ways in which Attica’s prisoners understood the consequences of not fighting for better rights, see: “Lessons from Attica: From Prisoner Rebellion to Mass Incarceration and Back,” in special issue: “Mass Incarceration and Political Repression,” coedited by Mumia Abu-Jamal and Johanna Fernández, Socialism and Democracy, #66, vol. 28, no. 3 (December 2014).
42. The Correctional Association of New York, verdict, “Attica, 1982: An Analysis of Current Conditions in New York State Prisons” (New York, September 1982).
43. Ibid.
44. Ibid.; Verdict: National Coalition of Concerned Legal Professionals 7, no. 3 (July 2001).
45. The Correctional Association of New York, Verdict, “Attica, 1982: An Analysis of Current Conditions in New York State Prisons,” 5.
46. Ibid., 9, 11.
47. Ibid.
48. Ibid., 15.
49. Ibid., 20, 21.
50. Whereas Attica’s COs had belonged to AFSCME Council 82, in 1998 they broke away and became part of the much more conservative New York State Correctional Officers & Police Benevolent Association, NYSCOPBA. The Correctional Association of New York, Verdict, “Attica, 1982: An Analysis of Current Conditions in New York State Prisons,” 23.
51. Ibid.
52. Decision and Order, George Eng et al. v. Harold Smith et al., United States District Court, Western District of New York, No. CIV-80-385, January 29, 1988.
53. Roger Wilkins, “Since Attica, the Significant Changes Have Been Rhetorical,” New York Times, April 20, 1975; Michele Hays, “The New York Prison System—A Generation After Attica,” Verdict: National Coalition of Concerned Legal Professionals 7, no. 3 (July 2001).
54. The Correctional Association of New York, “Attica Correctional Facility: 2011,” Prison Visiting Project Report, April 2011.
55. Ibid.
56. Ibid.
57. The reality was that protesters weren’t the ones who physically attacked sixty-three reporters during the Democratic National Convention in 1968, nor was it students who shot, killed, and maimed so many at Kent State in 1970. Likewise it wasn’t the Native American protesters who surrounded FBI agents and began firing M-16 automatic weapons and throwing M-79 gas grenades into the town of Wounded Knee. And as indicated earlier, ordinary state violence defined Attica. But the spin that both liberal and conservative politicians put on such protests suggested otherwise. Americans had listened closely when the Democratic governor of South Dakota, Richard Kneip, had called members of the American Indian Movement “ ‘terrorists’ and ‘hoodlums’ and accused them of ‘creating a climate of fear, hatred, and reprisals.’ ” And Americans had listened equally intently to Mayor LeRoy Satrom, a longtime Democrat, when he offered his personal analysis of the blood that was shed in his city of Kent. Not only had this state official attributed the clash of May 4, 1970, to a “subversive element” among the students, but he assured the public that, should there be any more unrest, he would again send in the National Guard and he “would not send them out without loaded weapons.” See: John William Sayer, Ghost Dancing the Law: The Wounded Knee Trials (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000); 127; Dennis Banks et al. v. Richard Kneip, Governor of South Dakota et al.: Class Action for Deprivation of Constitutional Rights Under Color of Law, Feb. 1973. 2 folders, Box 11, Wounded Knee Legal Defense/Offense Committee Collection, Minnesota Historical Collection; Satrom quoted in: New York Times, June 13, 1970, 23.
58. See: James Munves, The Kent State Coverup (Bloomington: iUniverse, 2001); Laurel Krause and Mickey Huff, “Uncovering the Kent State Cover-Up,” Counterpunch, September 27, 2012; Stew Magnusen, Wounded Knee 1973: Still Bleeding: The American Indian Movement, the FBI, and Their Fight to Bury the Sins of the Past (Sioux Falls, SD: Courtbridge Publishing, 2013).
59. Joseph Berger, “Attica Inmates End Night Long Protest of Shooting,” New York Times, July 22, 1984.
60. Paul Mrozek, “Four Prison Guards Charged in Attack on Attica Inmate,” New York Daily News, December 14, 2011.
61. Ibid.
62. Ibid.
63. Paul Mrozek, “Three Attica Guards Re-Indicted on Gang Assault Charges,” New York Daily News, January 24, 2013.
64. Ibid.
65. Jason Ziolkowski, Attica CCS, Letter to “friends,” New York State Correctional Officers & Police Benevolent Association, undated.
66. Ibid.
67. Sergeant Sean Warner, Letter to “my NYSCOPBA Brothers and Sisters,” New York State Correctional Officers & Police Benevolent Association, undated.
68. Tom Robbins, “A Brutal Beating Wakes Attica’s Ghosts,” New York Times, February 28, 2015.
69. Tom Robbins and Lauren D’Avoliomarch, “3 Attica Guards Resign in Deal to Avoid Jail,” New York Times, March 2, 2015.
70. Ibid.
71. “CA Says Attica Guards’ Plea Deal in 2011 Gang Assault Is Historic, Not Justice,” March 3, 2015, Correctional Association of New York, http://www.correctionalassociation.org/news/ca-responds-to-attica-guards-plea-deal-in-2011-gang-assault.
72. Dan Herbeck, “Former Attica Prisoner’s Attorney Pledges to Push Forward with Federal Lawsuit,” Buffalo News, March 7, 2015.
73. Tom Robbins, “Feds Open Attica Investigation,” The Marshall Project, May 17, 2015.
74. Sarah Childress, “After Riot, Feds End Contract for Private Texas Prison,” Frontline, Public Broadcasting Service, March 17, 2015.
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