Where were you when news came of Attica?

Robert Douglass: I think when Attica broke I was actually in Albany, and Governor called me and he had sent Norm Heard, the budget director was out there, and the Commissioner Oswald, who was the head of the corrections system was at Attica, and I was in Albany, and he asked me to follow it very closely, which I did, and then, he felt it was getting worse and he said, "Would you go up to Attica and be my representative at Attica?" And, being a lawyer, I think he felt that might be helpful.

So I went out to Attica and kept in constant touch with him, and he was right, the situation was deteriorating. The inmates certainly had gripes about conditions in the prison system, but if you--it's all relative terms. It was the number of showers and the amount of fresh fruit you got, and whether or not they had alternatives to pork in the diet. They were not what I would consider the kind of complaints you might get [laugh] from some backwards states.

But there were complaints, and so the commissioner of corrections went out in the yard to explain that they were invoking some reforms and that he would deliver on his promises, and I thought we were making some headway, and the inmates had something like 24, 25 demands. Those demands had to do with conditions in the prison.