paolodesade

1971, 1,300 prisoners rebelled against their guards and took over the Attica Prison facility in Western New York State. They held forty guards hostage. They had a list of demands for better living conditions including showers, education and vocational training.
On Sept. 13, after seven days of negotiations between the prisoners and government authorities, the national guard and state police seized the prison, killing forty-three people, incuding ten hostages. This was the bloodiest one day encounter between americans since the civil war.

At the time sixty-three percent of the prisoners were black or Latino, but there were no blacks and only one Latino serving as guards.
The disparity between the keepers and the kept increased tensions at the prison by inserting a cultural gulf between guards and prisoners, and by giving black and Latino prisoners painful evidence that their fate was, in part, determined by race.
By 1995, the latest year with complete data, the prisoner population at Attica had increased to 80 percent black and Latino. But out of a total staff of 854, the number of blacks had only risen to 21 and the Latino staff to 7. Attica's staff remains 96.7 percent white.
Acording to the bureau of justice statistics webpage: In 1997, about 9% of the black population in the U.S. was under some form of correctional supervision compared to 2% of the white population and over 1% of other races.
Blacks were two times more likely than Hispanics and five times more likely than whites to be in jail.
At midyear 2004--
The Nation's prisons and jails incarcerated over 2.1 million persons.