Word: attica
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...cover story reported the sense of desperation in many prisons, but also noted certain hopeful signs of beginning improvement. Last week, as anxiety turned to bloodshed at Attica, members of nine of our domestic bureaus re-examined U.S. prisons for a new cover story on one of the had most gnawing failures. The promise of last winter had not been fulfilled quickly enough...
TIME'S Nation section this week attempts to answer a number of questions: precisely what happened at Attica and why, what the alternatives were for the inmates and the authorities, and what Attica will mean for the future of prison reform. Our coverage was supervised by New York Bureau Chief Frank McCulloch, and the reporting from Attica was done by a trio of correspondents. James Willwerth went to the prison when the uprising started. Having covered the Newark riots, been gassed at the 1968 Chicago disorders and spent a year in South Viet Nam and Cambodia, Willwerth is hardly...
Tear-gas-carrying helicopters at times hovered over the prison yards. Officers with high-powered rifles pointed their weapons from atop the 30-ft. walls. Behind police barriers, local youths guzzled beer and wisecracked about the jailhouse drama. Later, both black and white groups of radicals converged on Attica, demonstrating on behalf of the prisoners. Inside cell block D, inmates armed with baseball bats, claw hammers, clubs and tear-gas canisters kept close guard over their hostages. In the prison yard, with the cool intensity of guerrillas, leaders of the rebellion put forward demands as inmate typists recorded the dialogue...
More dispassionate witnesses point out that Attica is neither the best nor the worst of New York State's prisons. In fact, its prisoners have been successful in winning some improvements in their conditions-leading some Attica townspeople to complain that the "permissiveness" of the prison management was to blame for the rebellion. Yet most of the few prisoner gains were made through courts to change the policies of prison officials. In 1966, a federal court ordered officials to formulate rules that would allow Black Muslims to practice their faith. Attica prisoners conducted a non-violent sitdown strike last...
...troubles at Attica dramatize again the fact that much of the U.S. prison system (TIME cover, Jan. 18) is still inhumane and brutalizes rather than rehabilitates. The ills are not remedied by riots. The public has every reason to be outraged by the beatings, or as in last month's smaller but more violent uprising at San Quentin, the killing of guards. Yet, given the persistence of dehumanizing conditions in so many prisons, it is perhaps lucky that there have not been more Attica-scale rebellions...