Attica. The name itself has long signified resistance to prison abuse and state violence. In the 1975 film “Dog Day Afternoon,” Al Pacino, playing a bank robber, leads a crowd confronting the police in a chant of “Attica, Attica.” The rapper Nas, in his classic “If I Ruled the World,” promises to “open every cell in Attica, send ’em to Africa.” And Attica posters were once commonplace in the homes of black nationalists. The one in my family’s apartment in the 1970s featured a grainy black-and-white picture of Attica’s protesting prisoners, underneath the words “We are not beasts.” But memories of the 1971 uprising at Attica prison have grown hazy. I recently mentioned the word to a politically active Yale College student, who responded: “I
Primarily highlighted in the documentary is the idea of mass incarceration as “The New Jim Crow”, a phrase popularly used by author and civil rights advocate, Michelle Alexander in her book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. As many already know with it being a significant part of American history, the Jim Crow era was a time of intense racial segregation of African Americans from whites with the former having drastically inferior positions in society. Many of the discriminatory practices that were upheld in the Jim Crow era, including discrimination in housing, jobs, and voting are illegal now if applied to blacks, but are perfectly legal when applied to prisoners, many of whom are
Despite the fact that my parents have worked in the criminal justice system for many years, I have never given much thought to the treatment of prisoners. As we learned from the readings, the current state of the United States criminal justice system is imperfect to the point of cruelty to those involved in it. This is truer for individuals with a mental illness. Due to a lack of psychiatric facilities throughout Alabama and overcrowding of those that do exist, many criminal offenders with mental illnesses are sent to prisons instead. State prisons are currently overcrowded, leading to substandard conditions such in almost every aspect.
What can be learned about the Attica Prison Riot that can benefit society today? This riot began a chain reaction that changed the way the corrections department of this country works. Society should care about this uprising because it set a precedent that molded the way this country controls its prison population. New procedures and precedents were set that are still in place today and may not have been created had the riot never happened. First, we will learn about the conditions of the prison before the riot. Then, we will learn the demands of the prisoners and why some guards and prison workers were treated more harshly than others. Next, we learn whether or not the New York officials acted in “good faith” or not and how they finally
Many African-American are caught in a cycle unable to achieve the amenities of first-class citizenship, which is the exact same amenities that African-Americans have fought to achieve post slavery. Alexander proclaimed that the colorblindness to the mass incarceration of African-American are overshadow with the labeling of being a felon. And it’s because of the labeling of that society look at felon as if they were less than human the same way African-Americans was looked at during slavery. Alexander Asserts that mass incarceration is allowed to go on because of the eerie silence of the African-American community. According
Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crows: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York: New Press, 2010. Print.
Michelle Alexander’s New York Times Bestseller book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness is a book of many controversies. Alexander forms a complex argument of she considers mass incarceration to be the new Jim Crow. She makes interesting arguments on how and why mass incarceration of African Americans is like, the laws and policies dating back to slavery as well as the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries of the Jim Crow eras. She explores the ways in which the government continue to keep African Americans at the bottom of a racial caste.
On September 9th of 1971, a four day riot took place at the Attica Correctional Facility of Attica, New York. Within the prison many inmates had joined outside organizations such as the Black Panther Party, Black Muslims, Young Lords, and Nation of Islam to fight against racial oppression. Over eight-hundred inmates rioted against the guards in reaction to the subpar sanitation, medical treatment, racial tensions, and mental/physical abuse they endured in the prison. As conditions at Attica worsened, many convicts and citizens begged the governor of New York, Nelson Rockefeller, to make an appearance at the maximum security prison, but he refused to. "We must have Rockefeller," said one of the inmates' leaders. "We got to have Rockefeller here
The United States prison system struggles eminently with keeping offenders out of prison after being released. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, more than third of all prisoners who were arrested within five years of released were arrested within six months after release, with more than half arrested by the end of the year (Hughes, Wilson, & Beck, 2001). Among prisoners released in 2005 in 23 states with available data on inmates returned to prison, about half (55 percent) had either a parole or probation violation or an arrest for a new offense within three years that led to imprisonment (Durose, Cooper, & Snyder, 2014). Why are there many ex-offenders going back to prison within the first five years of release? Are there not enough resources to help offenders before or/and after being released from prison.
I think that the author dismisses prison abolitionists when in reality, in order to achieve what the Scandinavians have, we need to do exactly what the prison abolitionists are doing. We need to change our “pull yourself up from your bootstraps mentality” and strive for equity, inclusivity and accessibility. It is important to begin dramatic changes in our minds, our culture and ultimately our society. We need to look introspectively before we try to look outwards for
Arguing that the uprising was a consequence of groups (e.g., the Black Panthers, Weather Underground, and the Young Lords) radicalizing Attica’s inmates allowed state officials to avoid culpability for failing to reform its facilities. This diverted focus away from the abuses and poor conditions which marked Attica prior to the uprising and allowed Attica officials to minimize the initial expressed grievances of inmates. During the uprising, this framing granted the state license to pursue any means for ending the uprising, as the public staunchly stood against rebel prisoners characterized as radical and violent criminals. Their framing also supported a narrative forwarded by President Nixon, one which characterized political radicals as the “root of all evil” with regard to political activity in prisons. This achieved two ends: it ensured the federal government’s support of the antagonism and violence which marked the retaking of Attica; and it allowed New York State Governor Nelson Rockefeller to maintain continuity with his political party’s leader.
This indicates that prisoners, prior to the uprising, had little desire to assert power in a radical or revolutionary (i.e., asserting power through the “barrel of a gun”) way. Nonetheless, the Attica movement was influenced by the work of political radicals; this counters the notion that political radicalization had no influence whatsoever on the initial Attica movement. For example, the “July Manifesto”–the document which expressed the Attica inmates’ demands for reform–was partially modeled after a list of demands drafted by Black Panther Party members at Folsom Correction in California. Furthermore, Sam Melville–a former member of Weather Underground–wrote an essay on labor in Attica’s prison laundry which spurred his peers into advocating for improved pay and work conditions. Even if the July Manifesto and Melville’s essay had “radical” underpinnings, both documents more so concerned material conditions at the prison than an overthrow of or revolution against the American social and political
Within this paper, you will find a comprehensive review of the United States prison system, and why it needs to analyzed to better support and reform the people of this country. I plan to persuade the other side (politicians and society) into seeing that the way the prison system is now, is not ethical nor economical and it must change. We have one of the world’s largest prison population, but also a very high rate of recidivism. Recidivism is when the prisoners continuously return to prison without being reformed. They return for the same things that they were doing before. So, this leads us to ask what exactly are we doing wrong? When this happens, we as a nation must continuously pay to house and feed these inmates. The purpose of a prison needs to be examined so we can decide if we really are reforming our inmates, or just continuing a vicious cycle. What is the true purpose of prison besides just holding them in a cell? There must be more we can do for these hopeless members of society.
“As the walls of the ghetto shook and threatened to crumble, the walls of the prison were correspondingly extended, enlarged and fortified. . .” (Wacquant 2002:52). In his account, Wacquant implies that once ghettos began to disperse, American society required a new place for African Americans to reside: prison. Reading this article, one would never know that African Americans existed outside ghettos and prisons. The concept of African Americans in suburbia or anywhere of decent living standards is ignored completely. There is no dispute over the “racially skewed mass imprisonment” (Wacquant 2002:56) of black men and women, but not only African Americans inhabit ghettos and the “inner city.” However, the “centuries-old
When we do research on daily prison life, we come across two typical but less than ideal situations: either social imaginaries cloud our judgment or information provided by the prisons themselves hide certain weak or bad aspects that they do not want to make public. We can also find information on TV, but most of the time it either exaggerates or minimizes the facts. In order to obtain more reliable information, we have to have access to people who are working or have worked in this institution, and such will be the sources of this essay. We will be describing and giving examples of prison violence according to three types of violence: sexual, physical and psychological violence.
Radicalization process in prisons in not a new phenomenon. Prisons have served as a school for criminals throughout history. The education the inmates receive in these institutions can be either positive and allow them to progress once they are out, or very negative and lead to radicalize inmates with extreme ideologies. It is crucial to understand the definition of radicalization, which is a process by which an individual or a group comes to adopt increasingly extreme political, social, or religious ideals and aspirations that reject or undermine the status quo or reject and/or undermine contemporary ideas and expressions of freedom of choice. Throughout history prisons have bred racial ideologies that spread not only in prison but throughout