DISGRACE
On the 45th anniversary of the Attica debacle, U.S. inmates staged a coordinated protest over work and living conditions, but they were ignored or silenced.
Heather Ann Thompson is a historian at the University of Michigan who writes about prisons and prison policy. Her most recent book is Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and its Legacy (Pantheon, 2016).
On the 45th anniversary of the Attica debacle, U.S. inmates staged a coordinated protest over work and living conditions, but they were ignored or silenced.
Forty-five years after the protests at Attica, there is overwhelming evidence that the U.S. has learned little about prison reform and done even less to make things better.