Attica Aftermath

PRISONS Attica Aftermath In the wake of the tragic Attica uprising, New York state officials were trying to ensure that it can never happen again. They talk faintly of prison reform, much more passionately of better security. Shaken more than ever before in its history, the state prison system is determined to do better what it has always done before.

Bowing to the urgent demands of the prison guards' union. Corrections Commissioner Russell G. Oswald announced last week that he was seeking to create a super maximum security prison for the most rebellious and incorrigible inmates. Equipped to house 500 prisoners, this "maxi-maxi" would be relatively small and spokesmen for the guards' union insist that those assigned to it must be armed. The rest of the prison system would thus be rid of its worst troublemakers, who then would be able to make trouble in one explosive spot. "It would be a present day Devils Island," complains Republican State Senator John Dunne, who has embarked on a one-man Attica investigation. "The ethnic makeup would be almost entirely black. It could result in a black concentration camp."

More Assaults. Until the maxi-maxi is built, the guards at Attica are insisting on tightening up prison discipline. They blame the revolt on a too permissive atmosphere. "We never considered our job dangerous," says Attica Mayor Richard Miller, who also serves as a prison guard. "There have been more assaults on officers in the last year and a half than in all my years before. It just didn't used to happen."

In the meantime, the guards are apparently taking discipline into their own hands. While 50 prisoners implicated in the revolt are currently housed in a maximum security area that is clean and not too crowded, reports suggest that they are being made to pay for their behavior. Relatives visiting the prison have emerged weeping and complaining that inmates are beaten and threatened as a matter of routine. Last week three inmates testified in a federal court hearing in Buffalo that they had been repeatedly mistreated by guards since the rebellion. District Judge John T. Curtin refused to allow their request to be transferred to another prison, but he issued an order to Attica officials to stop abusing inmates. He also complained that the public was getting a "one-sided" view of the rebellion because newsmen were barred from interviewing prisoners.

Not all the reaction to Attica has been punitive. The state is planning to spend $4 million for repair of the prison and another $3 million for a modernization program that will include an expanded library and gymnasium as well as a shower for each cell block--a particular gripe of prisoners who normally are allowed to bathe only once a week. Governor Nelson Rockefeller asked five judges of the state court of appeals to appoint a commission to investigate all aspects of the rebellion. Last week the judges named a diverse nine-man commission to be headed by Robert B. McKay, Dean of the New York University Law School.

More Passion. The commission will have plenty of competition from other investigators who are flocking to Attica. In addition to Senator Dunne's crusade, a committee will be established by the state legislature to consider changes in the penal system. Former U.S. Senator Charles Goodell has set up a committee of scholars to conduct a study of prison reform. State Deputy Attorney General Robert Fischer is briskly probing the rebellion with the aim of bringing possible indictments against some of the inmates.

The danger is that an honest search for the facts may be derailed by ideological passion. The left has seized the occasion to romanticize the "political" prisoners who led their fellow inmates to the slaughter; the right has taken the opportunity to assail the left. Spiro Agnew, for instance, complained that the "radical liberals" and the news media have turned the event into "yet another cause celebre in the pantheon of radical revolutionary propaganda." If this becomes the tone of the investigation, there will be no lesson learned from Attica.

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