Murder on the Inside: The True Story of the Deadly Riot at Kingston Penitentiary

"You have taken our civil rights--we want our human rights." On April 14, 1971, a handful of prisoners attacked the guards at Kingston Penitentiary and seized control. The inmates held the guards hostage for four intense days, making headlines around the world and drawing international attention to the dehumanizing realities of incarceration when several inmates appeared on camera and described the overcrowding, inadequate rehabilitation programs, harsh punishment, and extreme isolation they endured. As negotiations between the leaders of the inmates and a citizens' committee of journalists and lawyers entered the a third day, tensions inside the prison erupted when gangs of angry, disenfranchised convicts turned their rage towards the weakest prisoners. As heavily armed soldiers prepared to regain control of the prison through a full military assault, the inmates finally gave up the fight. Murder on the Inside tells the story of a prison in crisis set against the backdrop of a pivotal time in history when the disenfranchised began rebelling against institutional discrimination. Like the uprising at the Attica Correctional Facility in upstate New York that occurred later the same year, leaving twenty-nine inmates and ten guards dead and marking a watershed moment for civil rights in America, the Kingston rebellion was a pivotal moment in Canadian thinking about human rights. Until now, few have known the story--yet the tense prison drama chronicled in this book is more relevant today than ever, as Canada's correctional system remains mired in crisis almost fifty years later.