Summary

In 1971, the small town of Attica, New York was home to quaint villages, a population of less than three thousand, and scenery “straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting,” against the backdrop of “one of New York’s most notorious maximum security prisons,” Attica Correctional Facility (5). Much like other New York penitentiaries, Attica was archaic, overcrowded, predominantly filled with black and Hispanic urban youth, and predominantly run by white guards. Attica’s inmates were placed into one of five housing blocks, which also designated where they would work. While some inmates were fortunate enough to make $2.90 per day for their labor, most earned a mere 6 cents per day or less. Prisoners relied on this wage to purchase commissary items to counter the institution’s skimpy provisions, which included clothes for work, one bar of soap and one roll of toilet paper per month...