The Attica massacre was an official, ordered government action

Evidence

In the aftermath of the 1971 prisoner rebellion at Attica and the government-sponsored massacre, public opinion began to favor prison reform. Forty-three Attica prisoners and eleven guards and civilians were killed by the National Guard, who had been ordered to retake the prison by Governor Nelson Rockefeller. The leaders of the prison rebellion had been very specific about their demands. In their “practical demands” they expressed concerns about diet, improvement in the quality of guards, more realistic rehabilitation programs, and better education programs. — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 149

Categorization

• XREF: The government-sponsored massacre framing connects to Davis’s broader claim in earlier chapters that state violence sustains the prison.