Inmates were allowed only one shower a week and one roll of toilet paper a month, according to The Nation. There were issues of overcrowding, and the prison was reportedly 600 people over capacity. The medical care they received was so dire that prison civilian staff took notice. According to historian Heather Ann Thompson, author of “Blood in the Water” (via The New Yorker), when a medical worker at Attica was viewed as responsible for an inmate’s death, the staff considered taking action by protesting outside their clinics. “We had sick men who had never received any medical attention in Attica,” said riot leader Richard Clark said (as quoted in Time). While an outside doctor was allowed in during the riot to help injured hostages, he ended up treating prisoners for untreated health problems neglected while they were incarcerated.
To make matters worse, prison guards were not sufficiently trained and came from local, rural communities where other jobs were sparse, according to documentary filmmaker Stanley Nelson, in an interview with NPR.
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According to former inmate Arthur Harrison (via NPR), prison guards would form “goon squads” at night and storm into cells, four or five at a time. Without the ability to defend himself, an inmate would get beaten and sometimes forcibly taken into solitary confinement for a beating. Former inmate Albert Victory said these regular beatings are what caused the prisoners to detonate. “That’s the way it was done. Men just couldn’t take it anymore,” he said (as quoted in The Nation).
“We had sick men who had never received any medical attention in Attica,” riot leader Richard Clark said (as quoted in Time)
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