It Was the Most Violent Prison in America. Then the Guards Went on Strike

You may be familiar with the prisoner uprising at Attica in the ’70s. But unless you were of TV-watching age at the time, you’re likely less familiar with what happened at Massachusetts’ Walpole State Prison in 1973: a massive (and in many ways successful) experiment in self-governance by an incarcerated population. With deep sourcing and a voracious appetite for detail, Lauren Lee White immerses you in an important, oft-forgotten chapter of US history.

The NPRA [National Prisoners’ Reform Association] was run by an internal executive board of prisoners, a nucleus that branched out into scores of satellite committees. Every cell block had two representatives (there were always two men in each position in case one got put in segregation or transferred elsewhere) who reported to the board of directors, and every committee had two heads who communicated issues and needs to leadership, who would then provide what they could. BANTU, Christian Action, the Irish Winter Hill gang, the Italians—every clique had their NPRA reps. “With the committees we had set up and the organizations that relied upon us to help them,” Hamm tells me, “we had the whole entire prison population on our side.” Using Rodman’s philosophy of “strategic nonviolence,” NPRA members acted as teachers, even like surrogate parents, aiming to socialize the men they represented. The approach, NPRA member Jerry Sousa said during the guards’ strike, was based on the premise that to harm your fellow prisoner was to behave like a “pig,” no better than the system that robbed you of your family, your property, your liberty.