Attica

Multiple books and films have documented the five-day uprising of some 1,200 inmates and their taking hostage thirty-nine guards and staff at the Attica Correctional Facility in upstate New York in September 1971. For instance, A Time to Die: The Attica Prison Revolt (1975—and reissued in 1994 and 2011), by Tom Wicker, a New York Times editor-columnist and one of Attica's inmate-invited observers, records the events that culminated in the deaths of twenty-nine inmates and ten hostages—all killed by law enforcement officers who retook the prison on September 13. Heather Ann Thompson's 724-page Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy (2016) received both a Pulitzer Prize in History and a Bancroft Prize. And at least four documentaries and three docudramas have portrayed what was the largest and deadliest prison rebellion in U.S. history. However, the documentary Attica, co-directed by Stanley Nelson and Traci A. Curry on the fiftieth anniversary of the uprising, adds significantly to our understanding of this tragedy. Although the filmmakers clearly sympathize with the inmates, they provide some balance by interviewing family members of prison staff, including two guards who died there, as well as two members of the New York National Guard who were at the prison, ostensibly to assist with medical evacuation

Criminology · Guard (computer science · Political science · Prison · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis · History · Law · Psychology