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News of the New Jersey prison revolts spread quickly through prisons around the country, increasing tension everywhere. This week Southern Michigan State Prison at Jackson, 75 miles west of Detroit, exploded. Almost 200 of the prison's toughest convicts went wild in a disciplinary isolation block. Holding four guards as hostages, they wrecked their cell block, smashing everything in sight. Then, led by a robber named "Crazy" Jack Hyatt and an auto thief named Earl Ward, the rioting cons forced their way into other sections of the prison. They captured six more guards, swelled their forces to more than 2,500 with other released prisoners, some from hospital wards for the mentally dangerous.
Seizing control of half the prison yard and adjoining buildings, they burned down the laundry building, set fires in three others. Guards and state police surrounded the rioters with machine guns and shotguns. Shouting defiance across the prison yard, Ward held a knife at a guard's back as Crazy Jack warned: "We'll toss out a dead hostage if you start shooting." But as flying wedges of guards and troopers moved in, one convict was killed and eight others wounded under orders to shoot to kill if necessary.
* The "radios" were crystal sets fashioned from bits of wire, smuggled crystals and makeshift diaphragms. Though primitive, the sets easily picked up broadcasts from a nearby transmitter tower of Manhattan's station WOR.