1971 Attica riot may offer clues for prison reform
Forty years after the violent uprising at Attica, organizers of a two-day conference at the University of Buffalo Law School hope that revisiting the riot can provide a roadmap for future prison reforms.
With prison populations decreasing and budgets strained, now is a time to re-evaluate incarceration policies, said University of Buffalo law professor Teresa Miller.
“Right now is a really pivotal time because the incarceration has become so expensive,” said Miller, the conference organizer.
A series of panels will begin on Sept. 12 and culminate Sept. 13, the 40th anniversary of the retaking of the prison.
In that seizure, police fatally shot 29 inmates and 10 hostages.
The riot erupted on Sept. 9, 1971, with prisoners gaining control of Attica — a maximum-security prison in Wyoming County — and taking hostages.
Four days of negotiations ensued, but attempts to reach a peaceful end failed when State Police stormed the prison.
The riot — the deadliest prison insurrection in the country’s history — sparked numerous investigations and, to this day, stands as a touchstone event in any analysis of prison conditions.
Among panelists will be prison employees, inmates, correctional officials, prison condition experts and academics.
Heather Thompson, a Temple University history professor who is writing a book on Attica, said the conference provides an opportunity to look at the riot through a new lens — namely, as a springboard to discussions about current prison conditions.
“It does remain one of the most dramatic prison rebellions in American history and one that ended particularly tragically,” said Thompson, a conference panelist
” … The anniversary of Attica is also an opportunity to reassess what has happened to our criminal justice policies in the last four decades,” she said.
Despite four decades of scrutiny of the riot, much remains unknown, said Dee Quinn Miller, whose father, William Quinn, was a corrections officer who died from a beating from inmates during the Sept. 9 uprising.
“There are so many mistruths,” said Miller, who also will be on a panel.
Registration can be completed online at law.buffalo.edu/baldycenter/attica40.
There will also be a Sept. 11 screening of the 2001 [PROPAGANDA] documentary, Ghosts of Attica, for conference registrants.
Elliot Barkley, second from right, a spokesman for the Attica prisoners, talks with Russell Oswald, the New York state corrections commissioner, as the uprising entered its second day. / File photo
Another Attica riot mystery
Posted by Gary Craig • August 29, 2011 • 1:26 pm
Anyone who has researched the Attica riot of September 1971 knows that the story seems a never-ending labyrinth of mysteries and half-truths. From the minutes after the prison was seized and state officials claimed 10 hostages had been slain by inmates — they were actually fatally shot by police in the retaking – the legacy of the nation’s worst prison riot has been one of historical distortions.
I’m now working on a story about the 40th anniversary of Attica and decided to look into the fact that hundreds of thousands — and possibly millions — of pages of riot-related records are still blocked from public view. Some of these are grand jury minutes, which are typically exempt from public release. Other records, used by the McKay state commission that investigated the riot, are considered exempt under the state’s Freedom of Information Law, or FOIL. (Look for more about this in the Sunday story.)
Hugh Carey
For years, survivors of Attica have lived under the understanding that in 1976 then Gov. Hugh Carey, who passed away this month, ordered many Attica records sealed for 50 years. That move, as the story goes, was part of his sweeping pardon for inmates and state employees implicated in riot-related crimes. (Many considered the move a way to ensure no police were convicted of murder in the retaking; Carey contended that the retaking was such a tangled violent mess that a clean slate was the only recourse).
During my reporting, I’ve run into one significant problem: Determining whether Carey ever did issue such an order. Historians and archivists don’t seem to have a record of the sort (though I’m still looking), and Carey’s public statements when he issued the pardon do not, best I can tell, include a comment about a sealing of records. Yet, a Google search of “Carey and Attica records and sealing” shows just how widespread this belief actually is.
Practically, this question doesn’t change the dynamics of what might and might not be public. The state Archives agency has exempted much of the work of the McKay Commission from public view, saying the records are protected under state FOIL. (The law provides for privacy protections and other exemptions.) And the grand jury records would be sealed, short of a court order, regardless.
As you’ll see in Sunday’s story (which I hope you’ll read) there are people who survived the riot in different capacities — inmate, hostage, negotiator — who think the records should be opened. Even Dr. Michael Baden, the pathologist who in 1971 confirmed the hostages were killed by police gunfire, believes transparency is the best antidote to another tragedy of this magnitude.
There are those who differ, thinking that individuals might be named and accused publicly of crimes without a recourse through the courts. There was brutality at Attica on all sides — a guard died from a beating by inmates and an emergency worker claims he saw a State Trooper shoot a wounded inmate in the head during the retaking — and the records may well reveal more stories of this sort.
One day, of course, the wounds might not be as raw and the records can be viewed through a clinical lens. But 40 years later, for many whose lives will forever be interlaced with Attica, the wounds still persist. http://blogs.democratandchronicle.com/watchdog/2011/08/29/another-attica-riot-mystery/
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