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FREEDOMWAYS

FOURTH QUARTER 1971

United States prisons are not exceptions, despite agnewian gobbledegowk that "the theory of American criminology and our penal system remain among the most humane in the world". Attica and all the prisons of this land are but a reflection of the "free" society outside.

It is not an accident that Attica is filled with Black inmates. As workers, as home dwellers, as family units, Afro-Americans are driven into the unemployed, into ghettos, onto "relief" rolls. For at least a clue as to why the present prison population is Black, just look at the latest figures which show Black teenage unemployment rates at 34.9 per cent and in poverty areas as 39.1 per cent. At another time and another place, prisons will harbor aliens, as in the remembered Palmer-J. Edgar Hoover raids of 1920, or with laborers demanding their rights, or with Chicanos, or American Indians.

On one fact you can count - those in prison will always be poor, no matter what their color or ethnic origin because this country is rich man's territory and becoming more so with each passing day.

Laws are made, in our case overwhelmingly for the protection of property. And they are broken, sometimes violently. They are broken because "have nots" (to remember a Franklin Roosevelt formulation) need, often desperately, some of what the "haves" have. These lawbreakers become political prisoners in the unavoidable sense that what they need is not obtainable through "legal" means. They have sought to break out of the political framework which denies them jobs, education, freedom of expression, even hope.

Thus Attica was no aberration. It expressed precisely where we have come to in our society. Attica stands beacon-clear as a microcosm of class war on "lesser" peoples.

Malevolence and inhumanity are built into the prison system as well as the ancillary groupings - police, lawyers, courts, that feed into the "big house". That this is so, one need only witness the incredible case of Angela Davis, held in solitary custody now for over a year, her life more than her health endangered, while the state acts out a travesty of democratic procedure. 

Where can reform fit into this morass? With all best intentions on the part of those shocked by events, their fiercest efforts will fall short. One mindless bureaucrat will replace another, one installation, emphasizing above all else "security precautions" will be built on the 

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