For 36 hours, rioting prisoners at the Penitentiary of New Mexico turned an arguably already terrible place into a scene of abject horror. On February 2, 1980, a group of inmates wrested control of the facility from the correctional officers who worked there, holding the guards hostage while moving through the prison and attacking other inmates with lead piping, homemade shanks, and blowtorches.
By the time order was restored, 33 inmates were killed and hundreds were injured—including several guards, who suffered gruesome injuries.
A&E True Crime spoke with Andrew Brininstool, author of High Desert Blood: The 1980 New Mexico Prison Riot and the Tragedy of the Williams Brothers, about what caused the bloodiest prison riot in American history.
How did this group of prisoners take control of the Penitentiary of New Mexico?
There was a cell block—Cell Block Five—that was under construction because of an earlier escape attempt. And so they placed them all [the inmates] in a dorm. It looked like a military dorm. These are hardcore murderers and rapists, together with tax fraud guys, and one night they got drunk. They’d made booze in a Hefty bag, and they said, “We’re taking over.” That’s really all it was. They took advantage of some of the poor lapses of policies of the correctional officers.
What kind of lapses?
One policy is that, when doing a night check, usually three officers go: two go inside, and one locks the door and stays outside. The idea is that if there’s a riot within that dorm, at least it’s contained. That night, they had a rookie on the door, and he did not lock that door. He stood inside with the door open and waited, and so the first person they attacked and assaulted was him.
The door to the main corridor was open. They took [the guards’] keys and got into the main corridor and went to the central command station. The central command station had windows that gave way right away. So within 20 minutes, the inmates had the keys to every cell and dorm, including protective custody and the pharmacy.
A prison riot is a pretty big risk for inmates to take. What made them do it in the first place?
The failures that took place at the Penitentiary of New Mexico are everyday failures that we still see at prisons today. It was understaffed, overpopulated and the treatment of prisoners was barbaric.
In what way were they treated badly?
The real lynchpin of this was a Thanksgiving food issue, from 1977. In ’77, the inmates went on strike after they were served a meal that made 80% of them really sick. To respond to that, they held a sit in. It wasn’t quite a hunger strike–they were just not going to eat lunch that day. Rather than deal with that through negotiations, the inmates were forced to walk to the cafeteria while being beaten with axe handles. And I think at that point, any grace between the authorities and the prisoners went away.
This turned into a hostage situation, where the prisoners were holding the guards as a point of negotiation. What were they negotiating over?
They wanted better conditions. They wanted federal officials to enter the penitentiary to ensure that the rioters wouldn’t face retaliation. They wanted to end overcrowding, to improve prison food, to allow media into the prison, to improve the recreational facilities and educational facilities, and to end the harassment of inmates.
There was tremendous violence committed during this riot. Can you describe the nature of the attacks?
There was only one prison in the state, and they were locking up witnesses to murder in the same prison with the people they ratted out. That’s only going to go well for so long.
In the aftermath of the riot, was the prison run differently?
For six months or so, because it was being run by the National Guard and the federal government. They said the food was good for about six months. But then it got worse. Murders went up after the riot, between ‘81 and ‘85, and most of those were murders of prisoners who had been witnesses of murders during the riot. Corrections officers got killed at a higher rate. Escapes went up. It was the same prison. They just locked them back up in the same hell house.
Could something like this could happen again?
Oh yeah. I wouldn’t be surprised at all. For a while I was tracking–not riots, but uprisings and violent disagreements in prison–and all of them show the same reasons for the uprisings: mistreatment of guards who don’t get paid enough, overpopulation and a lack of representation from attorneys. The only differences now is that inmates have more visitation rights. They get iPads. But overall, I think the treatment is still inhumane.
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