A Reporter Revisits the Scene

TIME's James Willwerth, who covered the riot, returned to assess conditions today. His report:

ON the surface, Attica has changed. A new superintendent, Ernest L. Montanye, a beefy former guard, is trying to make the prison an easier place to do time. The screens in the visiting room are gone, and visitors now include friends and common-law wives. Prison officials still read inmates' mail, but they have relaxed the censorship of newspapers and magazines. Other improvements include an inmate-administration "liaison" committee, a second shower a week, soft drinks and health foods in the commissary, an orientation course for new prisoners, the hiring of 21 black and Spanish-speaking guards (total number: 415), one telephone call a month, individual control over the light bulb in a man's cell, a local all-night radio program on cell earphones, more yard time, new green wash-and-wear uniforms and a well-stocked law library.

Yet Attica remains troubled. In the end, the most important aspect of any prison is the relationships between the keepers and the kept. "It's hard doing time here," says Inmate Robert Johnson, 34. "It's the officers' attitude. Hold it up. Slow it down. Constant bickering." Some guards still call black inmates "nigger," and the doctor is accused of mixing arbitrary racial attitudes with his medicine. The food is still bad. At lunch the liver was leathery and the mashed potatoes cold and lumpy. Everyone at the table insisted that conditions are worse now than a year ago.

Officers armed with AR-15 rifles and sniper scopes now stand in towers above the exercise yards. Eighteen alleged leaders of the uprising are still held in an isolated cell block under "protective custody." A sense of tragedy is almost palpable in the dark hallways that spread like fingers through the prison. The gloom is accentuated by the wheezing and clicking of gates and locks.

Like most half-century-old prison fortresses, Attica was designed to confine and punish men rather than rehabilitate them. There are few opportunities for vocational training, counseling or education. In an effort to reduce tension, all correctional officers have lately attended ten hours of "conflict reduction" classes at local colleges. But as Superintendent Montanye sadly observes: "I am unable to point out any really new, progressive programs for the prisoners. And the human situation is abnormal. All we can do is bring tensions down to a level where, maybe, men can live decently."

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