Learning About Attica No Longer Banned in New York Prisons
By 
The restriction on reading material in prisons is one of so many ways the criminal injustice system needs to change. After a long fight, New York prisoners can now actually read about the Attica prison uprising.
New York authorities have lifted a ban that had stopped state prison inmates from reading a book about the 1971 Attica Correctional Facility uprising following a First Amendment lawsuit brought by its author.
State officials, however, said they will continue to censor one small part of the Pulitzer-prize winning book for security reasons. A two-page map of Attica will be removed from copies sent into the prisons.
Author Heather Ann Thompson, a historian and professor at the University of Michigan, sued the state’s prisons in March over the ban on her book “Blood in the Water: The Attica Uprising of 1971.”
Published in 2016, the book is one of the most comprehensive accounts of the uprising, where more than 1,300 inmates took over part of a prison in upstate New York to protest years of mistreatment. It ended when state troopers and guards shot tear gas into a prison yard before firing hundreds of rounds into the smoke.
God forbid prisoners be able to learn about their own condition….