American Decades
The Attica Riot and the Rights of Prisoners
The Attica Riot.
On 9 September 1971 inmates began a riot and takeover at the Attica State Correctional Facility in New York. The takeover ended four days later when law enforcement officers stormed the prison. Forty-three people were killed: ten prison guards who were being held as hostages and thirty-three inmates. The Attica riot captured the attention of the nation, directing interest to prison conditions and the rights of prisoners.
Background.
The riot at Attica came after a summer of tension and unrest at the prison. The prison was over-crowded, housing 2,250 men in a facility considered safe for 1,600. Racial tensions were also high. The prison had no black guards and only one Puerto Rican guard, yet the inmates were 54 percent black and 9 percent Puerto Rican. Tensions at the prison grew after inmate George Jackson was shot to death at San Quentin prison in California. Inmates assumed that he had been...
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1970's Law and Justice
- Overview
-
Topics in the News
- Abortion: Roe v. Wade
- The Attica Riot and the Rights of Prisoners
- The Changing Legal Profession
- Crime and Public Opinion
- The Death Penalty
- The Due-Process Revolution
- Employment Opportunity: Job Requirements and Discrimination
- Environmental Law
- The Equal Rights Amendment
- Equality Before the Law: Men and Women
- Legal Services
- The Other Side of Law and Order: Nixon and the Constraints of Law
- The Supreme Court and Public Policy: The Supreme Court of the 1970s
- Paddling in Schools
- The Rights of the Accused
- School Desegregation
- Headline Makers
- People in the News
- Deaths
- Publications
- Important Events in Law and Justice, 1970–1979
