Four hundred fifty prisoners rioted at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, Ohio, and continued to do so for ten days, citing grievances related to prison conditions, as well as the forced vaccination of Nation of Islam prisoners (for tuberculosis) against their religious beliefs.
The Southern Ohio Correctional Facility (commonly referred to as Lucasville) is a maximum security prison located just outside Lucasville in Scioto County, Ohio. The prison was constructed in 1972. As of 2022, the warden is Donald Redwood.
The prison is perhaps best known for its April 1993 riot, in which a total of 450 prisoners rioted, resulting in an 11-day standoff between rioters and law enforcement. One corrections officer and nine inmates were killed during the riot. The riot has been described as one of the largest crises in Ohio prison history and one of the longest prison sieges in U.S. history.
A prison riot is an act of concerted defiance or disorder by a group of prisoners against the prison administrators, prison officers, or other groups of prisoners.
Prison riots have not been the subject of many academic studies or research inquiries. The analyses that do exist tend to emphasize a connection between prison conditions (such as prison overcrowding) and riots, or discuss the dynamics of the modern prison riot. In addition, a large proportion of academic studies concentrate on specific cases of prison riots. Other recent research analyzes and examines prison strikes and reports of contention with inmate workers.