Prison Punishment

2 Pages 493 Words

Prison Punishment

This article really brought to my attention things I had never before imagined that happened in America’s prisons. I liked this article more than any other article we have read this year. I found it very interesting and it held my attention easily. To me, learning in-depth about a discreet and not so well-known topic in history was fascinating. I also feel that this article really dug up some dirt on certain situations makes known the truth about our American prisons in the seventies.

I find what I read to be quite appalling. I knew there had been prison riots before, but I had not know how many, the reasons for them, and their magnitudes. Zinn did a good job of relating all the different riots together with common denominators. What first grabbed my attention were the statistics. I could not believe how lopsided they were. In almost all cases, more than half of the prisoners were black. At Attica, 54% of inmates were black, while 100% of the guards were white. This racial separation contributed to some of the uprisings, but society’s problems contributed mostly. With the youth rebellions, the black movement, and the Vietnam War came prison rebellions, caused by the outside world leaking into prisons. The guards were in no way helping the situation. In fact, they were making it worse by the brutality they used on prisoners. George Jackson became a martyr for prisoners everywhere and he got the ball rolling for everyone else as they tried to finish what he started. Most of the prisoners were not even supposed to be in prison for as long as they were. Fro example, Martin Sostre, a 52 year-old black man, was sentenced to 25-30 years in prison for allegedly selling $15 worth of heroin to someone who later recanted his original testimony. Sostre was not freed though. Once one prison rioted, all of the others followed within months and days of the previous. The most infamous riot at Attica r...