Russell Oswald; N.Y. Prison Head During Attica Uprising

Russell Oswald, 82, head of New York state’s penal system during the violent 1971 Attica State Prison uprising. Oswald was commissioner of the state Department of Correctional Services from 1970 until 1973. In September, 1971, inmates rebelled at the maximum-security Attica prison in western New York. State police took control of the prison four days later in a bloody confrontation that left 39 people dead. Four others died during earlier violence. A state commission concluded that prison crowding and inmate idleness were the uprising’s major causes. Oswald later served as a member of the state’s Crime Victims Compensation Board before retiring from state service in 1978. In Albany, N.Y., on March 8.