Last week, I attended a talk about the Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 given by Heather Ann Thompson. This uprising happened in the midst of the civil rights era and the War on Crime under the Johnson administration in which black and brown men were arrested for drug offenses, property violations, and parole offenses. Resulting from this “war on crime” were crowded prisons with egregious conditions. When negotiations came to a standstill, the state dropped tear gas and opened fire on everyone involved, killing inmates and hostages.

Newspapers and the media painted the uprising as evidence of civil rights era excess, and portrayed the prisoners as “cold-blooded revolutionary militants” who murdered many. A media frenzy immediately ensued which false reports multiplied. At every level of government, Thompson asserts, there was complicity in a cover up. State Troopers destroyed evidence by clipping videos, distorting photographs, and doing anything to get indictments for inmates.

One thing that struck me that Thompson pointed out was the fact that prisons are public institutions, yet they remain heavily shrouded in secrecy. I also find it egregious how basic the demands were. They involved simple things like more sanitary conditions and better quality of food. Since this is a public institution, it seems reasonable that anyone can have access to certain records but Thompson points out that many are difficult to access. I think that since a popular conception of prisons is that they are meant to punish rather than rehabilitate, many simply do not care about the horrific conditions that some of these prisons contain.  However, I think that this is a pressing human rights issue and a problem that the United States should take seriously.