A Brief History
On April 11, 1993, prisoners at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility (Lucasville, Ohio) began a terrifying and deadly riot!
Digging Deeper
“Lucasville” was built in 1972 to house dangerous felons. The usual miserable prison conditions of overcrowding and racial tensions erupted into a riot when African-American prisoners were forced to submit to inoculations for tuberculosis in defiance of the teachings of The Nation of Islam (Black Muslim) religion that many belonged to. Of the 1,800+ prisoners (hundreds over capacity) 450 took part in the riot and subsequent siege.
A cracked angle to this riot was the unusual temporary alliance of the major white and black prison gangs, The Aryan Brotherhood and the Gangster Disciples. No guards were initially killed, but when negotiations did not proceed fast and favorably enough for the prisoners, one of the guards that had been taken hostage was strangled. The leadership committee of the prisoners had not yet decided to kill a guard to make a point, but unfortunately an inmate made that decision on his own. Initial reports of grotesque mutilation of the dead guard were later found to be false.
The riot started when a guard was overpowered and his keys taken by inmates, causing a rousing chorus of “We have the keys!” to be chanted by the prisoners. A total of 12 guards were taken hostage and used as leverage to eventually negotiate an agreement resulting in the prison warden signing a 21 point agreement.
One of the goals of the riot’s ringleaders was to use the situation of the prisoners being in control of the prison to find those inmates believed to be “snitches” and kill them. Nine prisoners were killed by other inmates for allegedly being informants.
After 11 days of the riot, the longest prison riot in which a fatality occurred in the US, authorities restored order and 5 inmates were tried and convicted of murder and sentenced to death. Fittingly, Ohio executions are carried out at the Lucasville prison.
The state of Ohio began upgrading prison procedures, security and facilities after the riot, and spent several million dollars on those upgrades over the next few years. The state also paid settlements totaling around $4 million to prisoners and $2 million to guards in response to lawsuits emanating from the riot.
The riot started on Easter Sunday!
Question for students (and subscribers) to ponder: What do you think can be done to avoid prison riots?
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Historical Evdience
For more information, please read…
Dotson, Larry and Gary Williams. Siege in Lucasville Revised Edition: An Insider’s Account and Critical Review of Ohio’s Worst Prison Riot. AuthorHouse, 2004.
Jamal, Mumia Abu and Staughton Lynd. Lucasville: The Untold Story of a Prison Uprising. PM Press, 2011.
