#bert useem

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Grievances and Ideology

“Once a riot has begun, many inmates use it as an occasion for purely individualistic predation. But such motives will not initiate a riot. Inmates do not band together, even momentarily, to seize hostages or expel the guards from an area merely in order to steal food from the canteen or to steal from other inmates' cells. In some riots the initiators are motivated by racial or gang-related hostility; but no riot we studied was of this type. In the cases we studied, the initiators were motivated by grievances against the state or the guard force.

We believe that deprivation does have to do with prison riots. It is not the physical condition of the inmates which matters, but their mental state; not their "objective" deprivation (at least not directly), but their subjective experience of deprivation and grievance. Subjective deprivation cannot be inferred with confidence from measures of income, caloric consumption, square feet per inmate, or the like. Between the objective stimuli and the subjective response there is a mediating linkage of cognitive processes. Subjective deprivation is hard to isolate and study. This is not a reason to suppose that it is of negligible importance.

Subjective deprivation is not a constant. There is great variation in the sense of injustice felt by prisoners. Some seethe with repressed fury, others gripe, others would much rather be outside but exhibit stoic resignation, and still others go to school, learn trades, and optimistically, contentedly, prepare for their release. There is variation among prisoners and among prisons. In some minimum-security facilities hardly anyone is inclined to riot, with or without organization.

In general, information, change and instability, and ideology can intensify the feelings of deprivation and destroy the presumption of legitimacy. One telling sort of information is evidence that other persons, similar in the relevant aspects, have better lives; for instance, prisoners in other prisons, with similar records, in the same or different states. If conditions actually are better elsewhere or have been better here in the past, it must be shown that these comparisons are irrelevant because circumstances now and here create a special situation, universally judged to be qualitatively different from those others. In particular, since the prisoner (unlike the Russian serf, the born slave, e.g.) has actually lived in better conditions of life, those of freedom, the authorities must impress upon him the universality of society's judgment that he is no longer the same sort of being that he was when he was a free man, a citizen, and that he is no longer entitled to the same privileges of life.

Uniformity and stability also contribute to the presumption of legitimacy; change and disorder weaken it; and arbitrariness and chaos shatter it. Fluctuating and unpredictable standards, a multiplicity of competing rules, give the lie to the legitimacy of an order. When every shift commander has a different set of rules, the odds are that they are all wrong; when the administration says something different every day, all its pronouncements are certainly lies; when corrections officials bicker and fight among themselves, they all must be scoundrels: this is how the inmate reasons. If none of the authorities' statements about what is possible need be believed, then the measure of what is "possible" becomes, for the inmate, a matter of rumor, speculation, wishful thinking, and study. When things are made worse, there had better be a cause—a decline in resources, a mass escape, or a noticeable change in the balance of political force; otherwise, the new level of deprivation will be taken as illegitimate. Even when things are made better, there had better be a cause—otherwise, yesterday's rule was illegitimate;and if the rule was illegitimate yesterday, mightn't it be so again today?”

-  Bert Useem and Peter Kimball, States of Siege: U.S. Prison Riots, 1971-1986. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. pp. 204-205.  

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Riot "Success"

“Except in unusual cases, inmates must expect that the return to control by authorities will mean, at least in the short run, a return to much worse conditions of life than before the rebellion: a lockdown, angry guards, less freedom, damaged facilities, lost and destroyed personal property, and possible administrative or criminal prosecutions and penalties. Whether there are long-term improvements is another matter. A riot can be said to have failed if these penalties are severe and benefits are few, and to have succeeded if penalties are mild and benefits are great. (Of course, "success" means something quite different to those inmates for whom a riot is primarily an opportunity for retribution, predation, or recreation.) In the riots under study, the legal penalties (as opposed to the casualties of the riot and its termination) were mildest at Attica and at New Mexico.

In both cases, riot prosecutions mostly collapsed. In part, this was a product of the intensity of the riots. Evidence was destroyed in the course of the riots and recaptures; the state did not have the resources or competence to collect it all, and at Attica the crimes committed by the forces of the state irretrievably contaminated the prosecutions. Moreover, public attention was focused on the cases, particularly on the Attica defendants, and legal talent was attracted. There may also have been less willingness by inmate witnesses to cooperate with the state in New Mexico than in Michigan, after the lesson in what can happen to "snitches." It is easier to get the goods on publicly identified leaders of more orderly riots, such as that at Moundsville. It is tempting to suppose that riots will be most successful when inmates are well organized, resourceful, rational, in control of themselves and, because of these attributes, can force officials to agree to their demands. This would follow logically from the resource mobilization perspective, which emphasizes the importance of resources and skill for both the initiation and success of collective action. However, it does not follow that the greater an adversary's skill, resources, capacity for rational thought, the stronger its bargaining position. It is the paradox of the bargaining situation, as Schelling has pointed out, that the very lack of rationality and organization can give a party power to compel concessions. The weak can credibly threaten, "Improve our conditions, or we will injure ourselves, our surroundings, and our blood will be on your hands." Groups more in control of themselves, less disposed to "irrational" self-injury, do not pose the same threat. Prison officials fear most of all another New Mexico-type bloodbath. The officials in West Virginia, with "better organized," more "rational" inmates, had less to fear. Officials will do a lot to avoid a New Mexico; they are less inclined to respond deeply to a West Virginia. Thus, we should not expect a one-to-one correspondence between a riot type and riot success. While the riots at Attica and New Mexico did effect profound changes, these same riots, in more conservative or leaner times or states, may have unleashed a backlash of anti-inmate sentiment. It seems unlikely that the West Virginia riot would have brought about deeper changes had there been more New Mexico- or Attica-style killings.

On the other hand, there is some (unmeasurable) chance that additional death and destruction would have created a consciousness of emergency in the court system or even in federal agencies, resulting in the allocation of more funds to the West Virginia system. Another factor may be as simple as the belief by the public and officials that riot organizers and hostage-takers should be punished, not rewarded, for their actions. If identifiable, rational inmates negotiate a riot settlement without getting themselves killed, then prison improvements may be seen as impermissibly rewarding their riot, even legitimating it. But if the rioters are "punished" enough, as at Attica, in the course of the recapture, then perhaps the state can move on to deal with the prison's problems. Or, if the rioters are seen as a faceless, irrational mass, as at New Mexico, it is mentally easier to see prison improvements as "solving a problem" rather than caving into inmate demands. From a different perspective, "effectiveness" can be thought to involve not only concrete concessions (e.g., better prison conditions), but how the activity transforms the participants themselves and those who model their behavior after the participants. Even if one agrees that the most successful riots are the least organized, one can still suspect that a "success" like New Mexico teaches no useful lessons. The notion is that this sort of violence and disorder are debasing to the individual and the (inmate) collectivity.” - Bert Useem and Peter Kimball, States of Siege: U.S. Prison Riots, 1971-1986. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. pp. 223-225.

Picture: Workers comb through the destruction left from the 1980 prison riot, looking for evidence and records.

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PRISON RIOTS AND REVOLUTIONS

“Before moving to examine the applicability of theories of revolution to prison riots, let us first consider some of the broad similarities between prison riots and revolutions. First, there is the puzzle of the occurrence, indeed the frequent occurrence, of both prison riots and revolutions. It has long been a puzzle, given the overwhelming power of the state and the extremely limited resources and freedom exercised by peasants, why peasant rebellions and revolutions should occur at all. Yet revolutions, while certainly not part of the normal state of political affairs, are frequent Before moving to examine the applicability of theories of revolution to prison riots, let us first consider some of the broad similarities between prison riots and revolutions. First, there is the puzzle of the occurrence, indeed the frequent occurrence, of both prison riots and revolutions. It has long been a puzzle, given the overwhelming power of the state and the extremely limited resources and freedom exercised by peasants, why peasant rebellions and revolutions should occur at all. Yet revolutions, while certainly not part of the normal state of political affairs, are frequent.

Although one would think that the extremely close control and supervision of prisoners, their nearly zero resources, and the overwhelming power and authority of the prison guards and authorities, backed up by the heavily armed forces of state troopers, would virtually preclude any large-scale insurrection by prisoners, it is a remarkable fact that prison riots are fairly frequent occurrences. Since the spread of the modern penitentiary system in the early 20th century, episodes in which the prison authorities lose control of a significant amount of the “territory” and subject population of a prison (the analogue to Tilly’s “revolutionary situation”) have occurred in all nations with prisons, often in the tens or dozens per year (Adams 1994, pp. 12–13). Montgomery and Crews (1998) have located more than 1,300 riots in U.S. prisons between 1950 and 1995. Here too, one could challenge the broadness of their definition of riot, but clearly prison riots are part of prison history, just as revolutions are part of political history.

A second striking parallel is that prison riots, like revolutions, tend to occur in waves (Goldstone 1991; Katz 1997). Particularly notable waves in the United States occurred in 1928–29, in 1951–55, in 1968–1973, in 1980–82, and, most recently, in 1986. Despite their evident importance, almost no analytic attention has been given to the causes of waves of prison riots. Theories that focus on the actions of particular wardens, whether on their “cracking down” or “loosening up,” clearly give no answer to why prison riots should strike a variety of different prisons, in different states, in clusters, at particular times.

A third empirical similarity is that prison riots, like revolutions, are quite varied in form and process. In both cases, the event can be largely spontaneous or the result of planning and leadership by a vanguard group. Among both prison riots and revolutions, some are extremely violent, while in others violence is moderate or almost absent. It is worth noting that in both riots and revolutions, most violence is not perpetrated by revolutionaries or rioters against authorities: the highest tolls of death and violence occur either when authorities use force to suppress a revolution or to retake a prison (e.g., as at Attica in 1971) or when revolutionaries or prisoners have fully taken control and take violent action against other groups (e.g., reigns of terror in revolutions) or against other prisoners (e.g., as at New Mexico in 1980). Moreover, both revolutions and prison riots are—like all historical events—subject to the role of contingent events that can shape the outbreak, duration, and scope of the event. And just as the duration and outcome of revolutions vary widely, so does that of prison riots. Of course, most revolutionary situations and prison disorders result in only a temporary breakdown of order. But just as a few revolutionary regimes succeed in capturing power for years before being overturned (e.g., the French Revolution of 1789–1815 and the English Revolution of 1640–60 both lasted decades before counterrevolutionary forces restored something much like the old regime), so a few prison riots succeed in maintaining control of large portions of prisons for days or even weeks. There is, of course, no analogue in the prison riot to something like Russia’s October Revolution or the Chinese Communist Revolution, both cases in which the revolutionaries took permanent control of the regime. ... It is also important to realize that many prison riots do lead to farreaching change, even a restructuring of a jurisdiction’s entire correctional system. For example, an immediate consequence of the 1980 riot in New Mexico was that the state signed a “consent decree” with the state’s inmates. This decree, to this day, governs nearly every aspect of corrections in New Mexico, from the cell space that must be made available to inmates, to rehabilitative programming, to the temperature of the water used to wash dishes. One need only think of the consequences of the Attica prison riot in New York (Wicker 1975; Aziz 1990, chap. 3), or the Woolf report in Great Britain following the riot and occupation of Strangeways  prison in Manchester (Player and Jenkins 1994), to see that prison riots, like many rebellions and revolutionary situations, can lead to major changes in the regime of authority merely in response to the temporary loss of control faced by the governing bodies.

Finally, to return to Tocqueville ([1856] 1955), it is a consistent finding for both revolutions and prison riots that such events frequently follow efforts by the administration to make reforms to improve the administration and conditions in the society or the institution. We offer an explanation of this fact below; at this point, we merely note it as yet another striking similarity between the dynamics of these phenomena.”

- Jack A. Goldstone and Bert Useem, “Prison Riots as Microrevolutions: An Extension of State‐Centered Theories of Revolution.” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 104, No. 4 (January 1999), pp. 989-991.   

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PRISONS, SOCIETY, AND SOCIAL THEORY

“Prisons have long been used as a laboratory to develop and test social theory (Beaumont and Tocqueville 1833; Sykes 1958; Goffman 1968; Foucault 1979; Garland 1990). Foucault (1979), for example, argued that the essence of prison—the use of power to discipline and punish nonconformist behavior—becomes the essence of all social life. Prison riots are but rebellions against this power. Gresham Sykes (1958), writing in the heyday of functionalism, suggested that prisons were functioning societies that, although they were “societies of captives,” needed the same perquisites for functioning as any other societies. Prison riots were evidence of a dysfunctional or pathological relationship between the inmates and the prison authorities. In particular, Sykes argued that wardens who “crack down” on inmate privileges (rights to property, recreation time, social interaction) that sustain a viable inmate society will likely reap rebellion in response. Erving Goffman (1968) argued that prisons were a special kind of “total institution,” similar to military bases or insane asylums in the degree of control they exercised over inmates’ lives.

Yet another viewpoint, now overlooked but worth reviving, was expressed by Thomas Mathiesen (1965), who argued that prisons are similar to traditional patriarchal or monarchical regimes. He pointed out that wardens exercise a mixture of personal and bureaucratic rule and decree many of the practices of their institution, that they control armed force to maintain order, and that a well-articulated hierarchy—from prisoners to guards to higher officers on up to the warden—determines status and power.

We believe we can take Mathiesen’s viewpoint even further: The hierarchical structure of prisons is quite similar to that which prevailed in early modern monarchical or imperial regimes. Prisoners occupy positions much like serfs or bound peasants. They have their own “space” but are subject to much oversight and control from the central authorities, whom they must obey or face punishment consisting of loss of property or space (e.g., relocation to punishment units). They have a routine of eating and working that, if they follow it and respect the authorities, they can generally maintain. However, they have few or no options for what Albert Hirschman (1970) has called “voice” or “exit” and thus little control over either the conduct of the authorities or the basic conditions of their life.

The correctional officers and prison’s executive staff are much like the bureaucratic elites in an absolutist state. They come and go freely, they have considerable authority over the prisoners, but they also are strictly subordinate to the central authorities and must perform their duties in the bureaucratic framework established by the prison administration. Finally, the wardens face pressures similar to those faced by the heads of early modern states, particularly what Skocpol (1979) has called the Janus-like situation of the state, facing both internal and external demands at the same time. State rulers need to meet internal demands to maintain the loyalty of their bureaucratic elites and order among the population; yet state leaders’ performance of these tasks is complicated by external demands, for other states can create military and economic pressures that strain state resources and make it difficult to meet internal demands. In similar fashion, wardens need to maintain the loyalty of their officers and order among the prisoners; yet they too face external pressures from the broader society. Although these are not military pressures, they can be no less imposing. State and national legislatures, courts, and executives can mandate new rules for prison administration, increase prisoner populations, and demand changes in prison conditions, all while restricting or even reducing prison budgets. Political pressures and conflicts outside the prison can lead to the dismissal of wardens, support for prisoner demands, or insistence that the prison pursue certain outcomes, such as the integration of facilities or the rehabilitation of inmates. These external pressures can make it difficult or impossible for wardens to meet the internal demands of prison administration. Given the great similarity between the sociopolitical structures of prisons and of early modern monarchical/imperial states, it seems quite reasonable to explore whether the state-centered theory of revolutions—developed to account for instability in this kind of state—can also be applied to prison riots. If so, it may both demonstrate an unusually “deep” generalization of these theories to phenomena on an entirely different social scale and shed light on the origins of the important social problem of prison disorders.

- Jack A. Goldstone and Bert Useem, “Prison Riots as Microrevolutions: An Extension of State‐Centered Theories of Revolution.” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 104, No. 4 (January 1999), pp. 987-988.

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"The Michigan Correctional Officer’s Union controlled State Prison of Southern Michigan’s Central Complex for about two hours. The circumstances under which they lost it were hotly debated later; but lose it they did. Rumors quickly spread among inmates that the guards planned to lock down the prison for the entire three-day Memorial Day weekend. Such long weekends are traditionally periods of extra free time, recreation, and visits. Not only would there be a loss of these privileges, but some inmates believed the guards intended to starve them the whole weekend. Inmates assigned to the kitchen crew heard news reports of the guards’ actions on their portable radios, including the fact that the lockdown was in violation of Mintzes’ orders. Shortly before noon, a group of inmates from the yard entered Block 3. There are two stories about what happened. According to the guards involved, there was a big crowd of inmates, between 80 and 150. They swarmed over the defenseless guards and took their keys. The second story was supported by most inmates on the scene and given credence by DOC officials. In this story, only five or six inmates from the group who had remained on the yard came in and asked the guards stationed there why the inmates had not been let out for lunch. Under no duress, one of the guards handed over his keys to the inmates. One inmate eyewitness claimed that the guard “took the keys and said, ‘If you want them out, you all let them out and you guys have a good time.’ ” Another inmate reported hearing a guard say, “Take the son of a bitch,” as he handed over his keys. … …inmates got the keys, and the two guards stationed in Block 3 fled through a nearby door leading to Block 4. Inmates began unlocking the cells; then one discovered a key to the box enclosing the block’s “break levers” (large wrenches that unlock an entire tier of cells at one time). All inmates on Block 3 were free in minutes. Some of the inmates set fires in the counselors’ offices, a storage room, a guards’ bathroom, and a guards’ desk. An inmate wrote later of this desk:

Some of the guards who sat there were exceptionally decent men … but one in particular … was an exceptionally sadistic martinet with the kind of unenlightened, combative attitude toward prisoners that you might expect from an uneducated thug… . Every time I heard an inmate mention that burned-up officer’s desk, they spoke that particular officer’s name as if the sorry, charred remnant of furniture somehow contained the officer’s soul.

At the same time, a group of inmates entered Block 4, adjoining. They overpowered the guards stationed there, seized their keys, and unlocked the Block 4 inmates. A group of inmates then headed for Block 5, the segregation unit. Around 12:30 p.m. the inmates succeeded in breaking in the entrance of Block 5. Another group of inmates, wielding bats, pipes, and other weapons, began beating on the door to Block 8. After the riot started, the guards closed ranks with the administration. The first two rifle squads assembled were sent to blocks 5 and 8 where, threatening to shoot, they forced rioting inmates to retreat. Gun squads were also deployed around the perimeter of the prison, and then in each of the other blocks not seized by inmates. These actions limited participation in the riot to the inmates from blocks 3 and 4 and the 200 inmates who had remained on the yard after the 9:45 bugle. Guards were also stationed on the roofs overseeing the yard, some of whom videotaped the activities on the yard.

By 12:30 p.m., smoke filled blocks 3 and 4, forcing out the inmates still there. At 1:10 p.m., a gun squad secured the two blocks, making sure no inmate was trapped inside.

The inmates on the yard, nearly 1,000, roamed about, looted the inmate store and a soft-drink stand, and set on fire the paint shop and the staff dining hall. As the afternoon wore on, inmates talked, played cards and basketball, wandered peacefully about, and traded and consumed items from the store.

One inmate described the atmosphere this way: 

“When they broke into the [store], they got clothes and food—it was a field day. People were taking their clothes off, putting on new ones—walking around eating big sandwiches.”

Another inmate reported:

Even the guys that were nice and model inmates participated because the store was open and the store is where everything is at that you want in a penitentiary as far as luxury. Because they had TVs, and they had trunks and clothes and, you know, they had all the food, and the money was in there also. Stamps and stuff like that. So everyone went in there and got what they wanted.

Muslim inmates abstained from looting, however,gathering instead in the prison chapel.

Relations between inmates and guards on the yard were not hostile, and in fact the guards appeared to have been infected by the mood of the inmates. One inmate reported that guards were “halfway cool about it” and accepted looted cigarettes from inmates. Another inmate recalls:

Well, the guards were saying go ahead and loot. It was a carnival atmosphere. The guards were eating ice cream that the inmates went in and got. The guards announced there would be no prosecution for that.

And finally, one inmate remembered,

In 30 minutes you could get all you could carry. Then you’d trade for what you wanted—yell “I’ve got two cans of peaches! I want fruit cocktail!” The guards didn’t say a word, they were quiet and meek.

Inmates took no hostages, and violence among inmates was isolated. An inmate recalled:

There was one incident—there were two at most. It was a guy who was supposed to be snitching. He got busted a couple of times with a pipe, but he walked away under his own steam. During the disturbance was the only time there was real unity. People eating together, the things they got from the store, they brought them to the middle of the yard so guys could eat them— there were ten guys cooking in the kitchen, cooking for everybody, pork and beans and bread and stuff.

No leadership group emerged and inmates made no demands for prison reform. One inmate reported that “during the riot, Deputy [Warden] Scott wanted somebody to bring up front a list of grievances. Nobody had one.” After the fires forced the evacuation of blocks 3 and 4, inmates occupied no buildings and their activities could be observed from the towers and roofs. Since (in Deputy Warden Scott’s words) “it was known that inmates were not harming each other and vandalism had subsided after the early stages, a decision was made by the Warden not to forcibly remove prisoners from the yard.”

Still, as a precaution, 150 state troopers were assembled outside the prison, in the event that force was necessary, and the National Guard was asked to provide auxiliary lighting in case the riot extended into the evening. At 7:45 p.m, the deputy warden ordered unarmed guards to replace the gun squads in blocks 3 and 4. At 8:00 p.m., the yard siren was blown and Warden Mintzes broadcast a conciliatory message over the public address system:

Attention all inmates, this is Warden Mintzes. We are aware of all that took place today. At this time we are only interested in restoring order. We want to permit you all to return to your housing units so that we can get you fed and start getting operations back to normal. We are not interested in reprisals. We simply want to blow the yard in and graduallybegin to restore order. If you will all cooperate, we can accomplish this in an orderly fashion… . Let’s work together to get order restored and rebuild what has been destroyed.

One inmate, when asked how the yard was cleared, said:

They told the guys that they could take the food and stuff from the store, clothing and things, and go back in the blocks, and they told they would feed us. And also [it was evening and] there were mosquitoes on the yard that big [indicates a length of several inches], and that helped convince us.

Another inmate explained:

They let it die down, guys got tired. They’d stole what there was to steal, destroyed what there was to destroy.

-  Bert Useem and Peter Kimball, States of Siege: U.S. Prison Riots, 1971-1986. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. p. 133-136.

[AL: Image is from The Michigan Daily, Ann Arbor. Vol. XCL. No. 14.5. May 23, 1981 ]

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Breakdown in Prisons

“Prior to all the riots under study, there was a breakdown in administrative control and operation of the prison. Prison riots are a product of that breakdown and should be thought of as such. Constituent elements of this breakdown included scandals; escapes; inconsistent and incoherent rules for inmates and guards; fragmentation, multiplication of levels, and instability within the correctional chain of command; weak administrators, often "outsiders" to the system; conflict between administration and guards, often resulting from strong guards organized in a union or otherwise cohesive and with good bargaining position relative to the state; public dissent among correctional actors; and the disruption of everyday routines for eating, work, and recreation. ... Of course, we only have detailed information on prisons where there were riots, not on those that avoided them, so our comparison is mainly a matter of inference. It is possible that all prison systems, even those without riots, had problems as severe as the ones we have recorded here; but we doubt it. The political tensions at Attica, the role of gangs at Joliet, the chaos in the New Mexico system, the guard rebelliousness in Michigan, and the poverty-driven noncompliance in West Virginia seem to us to be special things, beyond the pressures faced by the average underfunded and overcrowded system.

The effects of this breakdown are twofold. First, the deprivations of imprisonment surpass legitimate bounds. Inmates are not propelled to riot merely because they are deprived of the amenities available outside of prison—for punishment is the purpose of prison—but because the prison violates the standards subscribed to concurrently or previously by the state or by significant groups outside of the prison. Well-managed prisons, with adequate staffing and physical resources, perpetuate a feeling among inmates that the system conforms to reasonable standards of imprisonment. When stability and uniformity are not present, inmates look to other standards to judge their conditions.

Perhaps most important, where administrators and guards are powerful, unified, and competent, the conditions of imprisonment themselves seem more legitimate; the captors are seen as authoritative rather than merely powerful. On the other hand, where various actors in the prison structure are, or view each other as, fools, incompetents, or rascals, the appearance of legitimacy and of competence (and the two always go together) dissipates. Albert Salomon has pointed out the importance in the preparation of great revolutions of scandals destroying the people's faith in their rulers, and Peter Berger's comment on this is relevant here: "Long before social systems are brought down in violence, they are deprived of their ideological sustenance by contempt." The prison is not rehabilitative, say inmates; it is not constitutional; it is not even rational.

The second effect of a generalized systemic breakdown is the erosion of the security system. Poorly organized prisons are prone to appalling lapses in security, both in the indiscipline or inadequacies of the guard force and in the failures of the physical structure. This is the other necessary element of a preriot situation. In addition to the perception of their privation as illegitimate, the inmates must also perceive the system as physically vulnerable, and it must be vulnerable.

As security erodes, the acts of resistance we call "preparation" are more and more apt to succeed. Resistance snowballs; plans for a riot are widely discussed; they become realistic.

Erosion of security not only makes it more likely that inmates will initiate a disturbance; it makes it more likely that the disturbance will mushroom into a full -scale riot. Its spread to the rest of the institution is not inevitable, but depends on the organization and responsiveness of the guard force and on the adequacy of the architectural and human factors of security. Locked and maintained security grills or a quickly mobilized show of force can prevent a riot's spread and shorten its duration. Although the prison may still have experienced a "riot," the magnitude of the disturbance will put it in a different class from the disturbances we have studied. Recent riots at Iowa State Penitentiary and South Carolina's Kirkland Correctional Institution began the same way the New Mexico riot had begun; the former was crushed in two hours and the latter in four, in each case by practiced action of a riot control team.

A prison whose deprivations are considered no longer legitimate by prisoners can maintain stability through a well-maintained,disciplined security system. A security system which breaks down may not lead to a riot if the deprivations do not fall below what inmates believe is fair. But the two failings are likely to occur in tandem. First, they can share a common cause in administrative breakdown. Furthermore, they reinforce each other. A failure in security erodes the legitimacy of the deprivations and may make the conditions of life worse,... On the other hand, disgruntled inmates put a greater strain on the security system.” - Bert Useem and Peter Kimball, States of Siege: U.S. Prison Riots, 1971-1986. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. pp. 218-222   

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Northside Complex Riot I—May 22, 1981

“At 12:15, the emergency siren sounded, signaling inmates to lock up immediately. However, the guards, instead of ushering the inmates back to their cells, simply left the complex, apparently to aid in controlling the situation in Central Complex. The Michigan Correctional Officers’ Union later claimed that management had given them the "unusual" order to abandon their posts; a DOC official stated that they had asked to leave their posts and were given permission.

In any event, the Northside inmates found themselves suddenly in control of their complex, having done nothing to take it. Since Northside was sealed off from the Central Complex, there were in effect two riots going on at the same time, each requiring its own response by prison authorities. 

Many inmates reported that their first reaction was confusion:

It was chaotic. I seen police [i.e., guards] (laughter) running out. No one assaulted or threatened the guards as they left. People were grabbing weapons—knives, pipes, everything. So I picked me up a club because I didn't know what they [the other inmates] were thinking. Don't nobody. Everybody was paranoid; people milling around.

Inmates armed themselves mainly for self-protection rather than for aggression against guards or other inmates. As in the Central Complex, the next thing was to loot the stores and kitchen. "Everyone took part in it," said one inmate, "because it wasn't really a riot"—that is, an organized action—"it was more of a looting spree. It wasn't never a riot because they had chances to get hostages, and hold them, and hurt them, but they didn't." Inmates grilled steaks and divided up cases of cigarettes.

Two modular units were set on fire; one was a regular housing unit and the other was being prepared for use as an office. Inmates also vandalized the school building, including the audio-visual equipment in it, and looted the inmate store. There were a few fights, but little racial antagonism.

Reporters and camera crews collected along the double chain-link fence separating the Northside yard from the main highway. Some inmates shouted out to the reporters, urging them to write that the "guards had started it" and that black and white inmates had not attacked each other. 

Others chanted, "Give us back our good time," and denounced L. Brooks Patterson.”

- Bert Useem and Peter Kimball, States of Siege: U.S. Prison Riots, 1971-1986. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. p. 137.

[AL: Image is from Michigan archives: Michigan - prisons. Jackson State Prison. riot - 1981 - vmc9161]