A review by ktlee_writes
Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy by Heather Ann Thompson
4.0
BLOOD IN THE WATER: THE ATTICA PRISON UPRISING OF 1971 AND ITS LEGACY is Heather Ann Thompson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the conditions that drove inmates at the Attica Correctional Facility to take over the prison, New York State’s violent reprisals, the cover-up of the brutality by state officials, and the victims’ court battles for justice.
This is a meticulously researched book that readers with an interest in incarceration policy, criminal justice reform, political corruption, and legal maneuverings will learn much from. While the graphic depictions of state brutality or the decades of court battles can be difficult to read about, the book helps show the extent of the callousness, racism, and inhumanity that permeate our government systems and the people who run them.
I found myself asking, What separates the people who showed compassion towards the men involved in the uprising from those who wanted them dead? Why did some National Guardsmen flinch at the atrocities, while many state troopers and correctional officers actively beat or kill prisoners? Why were the doctors who came afterwards to care for the wounded flabbergasted by the egregious abuse, while the regular prison doctors were unmoved? What gives someone a conscience? What makes a person see another as a fellow human being versus an animal?
Heavy questions, heavier material, important history.
This is a meticulously researched book that readers with an interest in incarceration policy, criminal justice reform, political corruption, and legal maneuverings will learn much from. While the graphic depictions of state brutality or the decades of court battles can be difficult to read about, the book helps show the extent of the callousness, racism, and inhumanity that permeate our government systems and the people who run them.
I found myself asking, What separates the people who showed compassion towards the men involved in the uprising from those who wanted them dead? Why did some National Guardsmen flinch at the atrocities, while many state troopers and correctional officers actively beat or kill prisoners? Why were the doctors who came afterwards to care for the wounded flabbergasted by the egregious abuse, while the regular prison doctors were unmoved? What gives someone a conscience? What makes a person see another as a fellow human being versus an animal?
Heavy questions, heavier material, important history.