Word: atticas
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...COULD HAVE BEEN DONE EARLY? Rebellious prisoners, say many experts, are scared and uncertain at the start of an uprising and must be overwhelmed promptly. Contends one Midwestern warden: "At the beginning, the inmates had no security; they would have run if authorities had gone in right away." Actually, Attica prison guards tried, but were repulsed. The Midwestern officer insists that a large enough force, using tear gas and clubs instead of guns, could have been mustered quickly to handle the mob. Another warden says that bringing in too many outside police can undermine the authority of the regular prison...
...OVERSEERS' COMMITTEE A GOOD IDEA? Once the negotiation path is entered, an outside mediator trusted by both convicts and officers can be useful. But if there is a committee of mediation, it must be small to be effective, and it cannot be fractious. There were far too many Attica observers, and they were sharply divided in ideology. Rockefeller, who had complained at first about the role of "outside revolutionaries" in the uprising, was asked why he later admitted a potential troublemaker like Seale to the bargaining. "Because the prisoners wanted him," he replied...
SHOULD ROCKEFELLER HAVE GONE TO ATTICA? There is no way to know whether Rockefeller's arrival on the scene would have saved lives; yet it is hard to see how it could have made matters worse. A confident and able persuader, Rockefeller might have eased tensions by dramatizing the state's concern; he might even have given weight to Oswald's ultimatum. Theodore Kheel, New York's veteran labor negotiator, contends that the convicts found Oswald's quick acceptance of 28 prisoner demands "too good to be believed"; they feared that his promises were only a ploy to free...
Many of the rebels, of course, were in prison for violent and ugly crimes; many were there for lesser offenses. Yet by and large, at Attica they were treated without distinction, as numbers or niggers or animals to be caged. Most penologists point out that the key to dealing with inmates is to know them?and their leaders?well. In the end, the major failure at Attica may be that the authorities simply did not know what the desperate men behind their walls really wanted, thought or felt. Until the uprising became another symbol of America's many agonies...
Many of the demands that emerged in the Attica rebellion were first raised in July in a tough "manifesto" sent to Oswald and Rockefeller by a group of inmates called "the Attica Liberation Faction." The paper labeled Attica a "classic institution of authoritative inhumanity upon men," but added: "We are trying to do this in a democratic fashion. We feel there is no need to dramatize our demands...