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A Lesson to be Learned: 40 Plus Years After Attica Essay

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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 …show more content…

After the rebellion broke out, a few inmates took charge and wrote down the demands that they wanted to receive. At 8:50 am on September 9th the rebellion began and it lasted for four days straight. After the rebellion began, within hours, the inmates who had taken charge had drafted a list of thirty one demands. Out of the thirty one, only twenty eight of them were actually accepted by the corrections commissioner, Russell G. Oswald. The proposals could easily be met but the demands were impossible to be put in effect. In Attica At 40, Liliana Segura states:
“At the top of a list of “demands” was the basic request that officials “provide adequate food, water, and shelter for all inmates.” Others included adequate medical treatment,” “realistic, effective rehabilitation programs,” “true religious freedom” “an end to “censorship of newspapers, magazines [and] letters” and tellingly, “a program for the recruitment and employment of a significant number of black and Spanish-speaking officers” (“Attica At 40” 8).
Accordingly, the inmates mostly just wanted better living conditions, and to be treated more like people and less like criminals. The inmates wanted religious freedom. They wanted to have basic needs met such as the toilet paper issue as well as the showering, and they

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