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Attica is a political memory. On September 13th of this year, 1981, we mark the tenth anniversary of a ten minute period at the New York State Correctional Facility at Attica, New York in which forty-three inmates and employees died, thirty-nine under gunfire by police and National Guard troops. There are in comparison to the Attica prison rebellion worse examples of property damage to a penal institution. For example, the twenty million dollars worth of physical damage during the eight days of rioting at the state prison in McAlester, Oklahoma in 1973. There are worse examples of bloody mayhem, such as the riot at the maximum-security prison in Santa Fe, New Mexico during 1980 in which thirty-three persons died. "Yet Attica remains the yardstick (Associated Press, 1981)."

DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4615-9328-7_5

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