New Mexico State Penitentiary riot
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The New Mexico State Penitentiary Riot, which took place on February 2 and February 3, 1980 in the state's maximum security prison south of Santa Fe, was one of the most violent prison riots in the history of the American correctional system: 33 inmates were killed, and more than 100 inmates were treated for injuries. Though 12 guards were taken hostage, none were killed, but seven were treated for injuries suffered during beatings and rapes. Author Roger Morris in The Devil's Butcher Shop: The New Mexico Prison Uprising (University of New Mexico Press, 1988) suggests the death toll may have been higher, as a number of bodies were incinerated or dismembered during the course of the mayhem.
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[edit] Contributing causes to the riot
There were multiple causes leading up to the riot. A shortage of trained correctional staff, prison overcrowding, a lack of consistent policies, and poor communication between the staff and inmates were contributing factors. A lack of educational and rehabilitative programs, poor quality food, and inadequate separation of prisoners added to the turmoil. The correctional staff used a form of manipulation they called the "snitch game." Uncooperative prisoners were subject to being labeled by the staff as informers, and the subsequent abuse by fellow inmates often led to the prisoner choosing to become a "snitch" against his tormentors. However, the practice also hampered attempts to get accurate information from inmates.
There were 1,136 inmates in the New Mexico State Prison on the night of the riot, living in a space that was designed for nine hundred [1]. Morris writes that the conditions were tolerated by Governor Bruce King, Director of Prisons Felix Rodriguez, and prison officials Robert Montoya and Manuel Koroneos, and that warnings of an imminent riot were not heeded.
[edit] New Mexico prison riot
In the early morning of Saturday, February 2, 1980, two prisoners in Dormitory E-2, on the south side of the prison, were drinking homemade liquor, and overpowered a guard who caught them. Within minutes, four of the fifteen officers in the dormitory were taken hostage. One fleeing officer left behind a set of keys to most of the locks. Inmates began to come out of the prison seeking refuge at the fence where the National Guard had assembled. Those hostages not released were assaulted. At the start of the riot, eighty prisoners who wanted no part of the disturbance fled to the baseball field. They were later joined by hundreds of other inmates who escaped the violence within the prison.
Official sources state that at least 33 inmates died. Some overdosed on drugs, but many were tortured, dismembered, decapitated, or burned alive by fellow inmates [2]. Some sources cite a higher death toll. Twenty-three of the victims had been housed in Cell Block 4, the protective custody unit. Block 4 held informers ("snitches"), but also housed inmates who were weak, mentally ill or convicted of sex crimes. More than 200 inmates were treated for injuries sustained during the riot [3].
Morris writes that Cell Block 4 was separated from the rest of the prison by a steel grille. Rioting inmates used blowtorches to burn through the grille over five hours. Locked in their cells, the doomed informants begged the State Police to save them. The police did nothing, though it would have been possible for them to enter through a back door of the cell block either by employing a locksmith or welding open the security door.
[edit] Results of the riot
There were some prosecutions of inmates for crimes committed during the uprising. According to Morris, though, most crimes went unpunished. The longest additional sentence given to any convict was 9 years. Much of the evidence was lost or destroyed during and after the riot. As a result of the riot, a federal lawsuit that had been filed earlier by an inmate led to federal oversight of the New Mexico prison for two decades (Gallagher). According to Morris, Governor King's administration resisted attempts to reform the prison, delayed the suit and harassed witnesses. The suit was not settled until the administration of Governor Toney Anaya. There was a few exceptions. A man named Jimmy Gossenss was also believed to have been in cell block 4. He was not a snitch or a sex offender, just a man who had enemies (the Archuletas), imprisoned for accidentally shooting his wife. Though a jury had found him guilty of involuntary manslaughter and only sentenced him to 1 year in the county jail, he was caught trying to sneak in pain pills on work release. He was sentenced to 50 years in Santa Fe prison. The riot was exactly one year after his wife's death. He was one of the first to die by being hung on bars, his fingers and penis cut off, and after blow torching his body they stuck the torch through his head, and wrote Archuleta in his blood.
[edit] Other references
The thrash metal band Exodus talks about this riot on their song "The Last Act of Defiance" on their 1989 Fabulous Disaster album.
