Walpole prison strike

Following a March 1973

John Boone became Massachusetts's Corrections Commissioner in January 1972, loaned from a federal position. The Walpole prison had major incidents in his early months and a six-week lockdown in the Walpole prison, starting in December 1972, escalated tensions.[4]

Prison officer strike

The night of March 8, the prisoners voted to return to their prison jobs, ending their strike and allowing external observers in, signaling support for Boone's request for cooperation in return for good faith negotiations and 24-hour citizen observers.^[5] Rumors began to spread that the prison officers intended to strike.^[1]

The morning of March 14, 1973, the prison officers (guards) of Walpole's day shift

The striking prison officers had intended the walkout to call negative attention to the policies Boone's administration. Boone, in turn, anticipated the walkout to backfire and break the officers' union that blocked his prison reform plans. The prison's management was handed to a combination of the prisoners' newly created union, civilian observers, and a skeleton crew of trainees and officers.^[3]

Prisoners union

The prisoners formed a union to collectively bargain for improvements to working conditions and safety. Following an election in which 87 percent of the 540 inmates supported the union, they became a chapter of the National Prisoner Reform Association (NPRA). The state's correction commissioner accepted the group as the prisoners' authorized representatives for resolving grievances in April. The group's leadership articulated goals including inmate participation in the self-governance of the prison, i.e., "a say in how it's run". The guards union opposed their unionization as creating a slippery slope in which the prisoners would request more aspects of their incarceration.^[7]

The NPRA union was the main governance at Walpole between March 15 and May 19, 1973. During this period, the prison's security, policy, kitchen, and foundry were run by the prisoners. Various factions in the prison negotiated a truce at the beginning of the prison officer's strike^[8].There were no murders and violence was minimal. Civilian observers continued to volunteer at the prison, and their 10,000 recorded hours included documentation of the prisoners' self-governance.^[9]

Return of officers

Court order ended the officers' strike.^[4]

The strike is commonly regarded as either a failure of custodial control, for lack of adequate resourcing, or a radical experiment in participatory democracy.^[10] The film 3000 Years and Life documents the incident as an experiment in self-governance.^[11]

The prison officers walked out in 1978 and 1979 over on-time paychecks and

• Attica Prison riot

References