Alcatraz

by David Ward

  • The absence of an underground economy in money, luxury goods, drugs, and gambling virtually eliminated theft and strong arming among prisoners. Nor was there a social hierarchy headed by convict bosses that forced its will on other prisoners by intimidation and physical coercion.—Today’s convicts can only imagine what it was like to do time when prisoners were not trying to kill and exploit each other and instead presented a unified front to the staff.

  • Compared to state prisoners, the federal offenders at Alcatraz lacked certain characteristics that might have increased their chances of reoffending. First, only a very few—5 percent of the entire population—had been convicted for sex offenses, most of them military offenders who had raped adult females and ended up at Alcatraz as a consequence of subsequent misconduct at other prisons. At state prisons, sex offenders often constitute a significant segment of the population, but Alcatraz never held a prisoner who had molested a minor child or committed incest. All sex offenders were regarded by the Alcatraz convicts as “perverts,” and the few rapists who showed up made every effort to hide their commitment offenses. Alcatraz convicts therefore did not leave prison with the extra burden of trying to live down crimes that even their fellow prisoners regarded as abhorrent and that made them subject to extra surveillance by police and parole authorities. Second, and more important, the epidemic of drug use and abuse in free society, and especially in prisons, was yet to come. None of the gangster-era convicts returned to the free world with a record of drug addiction; and, because they had been in prison for an average of ten years, they had learned to live without alcohol. Only a few men, like Dale Stamphill, blamed excessive use of alcohol as a precipitating factor in their failure after release.

  • The island’s monastic regimen encouraged self-reflection and provided an opportunity for reevaluating values and priorities in life.—We know from our interviews that during their years at Alcatraz many men decided that they had done enough crime—and enough time. The many distractions present at standard prisons (frequent association with large numbers of other inmates, a variety of educational and recreational programs, movies, radio, newspapers, and other privileges) were absent on the Rock. This spartan existence left many hours for inmates to contemplate their lives up to that point—to think about the mother or father—or both—who died while they were in prison, the wife or girlfriend who was sleeping with other men, the children with whom they had no contact, and their inability to celebrate holidays, family occasions, and weekends on the town. As the aging process exerted its influence, the inmates knew from the departure of other prisoners that they too would eventually be transferred and released. During long hours of quiet isolation, interviewees recalled that they began to objectively weigh the costs and benefits of their criminal careers and, in many cases, resolved to take a different path for the remainder of their lives.

  • Another factor absent from today’s massive prison systems and mega penitentiaries is the attention that Director Bennett, several wardens, and other prison and parole officers gave Alcatraz inmates during and after their imprisonment.—As detailed in preceding chapters, these efforts provided some of our interviewees with the extra motivation or practical assistance they needed as they tried to turn their rebellious lives around. James Bennett made frequent trips to Alcatraz, set up an “office” in the old military cell block, and gave a considerable number of prisoners practical help along with the impression that he cared how the inmates would conduct their lives after release, and that they could change their ways. It should be noted, however, that Bennett’s help and that of other prison and parole officials was important for those men who were at a point in their lives when they were ready to try giving up their criminal careers.

  • A final feature that made the Alcatraz convicts unusual, compared to state and other federal prisoners, is how they felt about their prison experience: making it to the Rock, they knew, carried high status.—By the time we were able to interview them, Alcatraz’s reputation as this country’s toughest prison had been enhanced by such Hollywood films as Birdman of Alcatraz and Escape from Alcatraz. Beginning in the mid-1970s Alcatraz became a major tourist attraction as documentaries about the prison, famous escapes, the battle of Alcatraz, and notable prisoners began to appear on cable television channels. During our interviews, almost all the ex-prisoners expressed not regret, but pride, at having served time on the Rock. Instead of hiding their criminal and prison backgrounds, they found that their relatives, friends, neighbors, Park Service rangers, documentary filmmakers (and crowds of tourists when they visited the island) wanted to hear all about “what it was like” to serve time in this famous prison.

  The results of this study call into question past and present assumptions about the effects of long-term confinement in what are now called supermax penitentiaries, notably,

  • The label “habitual and incorrigible” was inaccurate for two-thirds of the gangster-era convicts and for half of the entire population of Alcatraz inmates when they were released from federal prison.

  • A record of misconduct in the prison did not preclude success after release.

  • A record of none or very few (one or two) reports of prison rule violations—being a conforming “model prisoner”—related to post-release failure, not success.

  • The great majority of prisoners did not suffer serious psychological damage from their confinement on America’s Devil’s Island.

  These findings emphasize the importance of conducting rigorous empirical evaluations of established penal policies and questioning the accuracy of conventional wisdom (generally comprised of “common sense” and “experience”) and the judgments of experts. Almost everyone presumed that negative consequences would accompany and follow confinement at Alcatraz. Adherents to this view included several senior officials of the Bureau of Prisons, other workers in the field of corrections, mental health professionals, university criminologists—and even the Alcatraz convicts themselves.

  The significance of Alcatraz has not faded with time. Contemporary supermax penitentiaries, based on the Alcatraz model—isolating a prison system’s most serious troublemakers in a maximum-custody, minimum-privilege institution—now house thousands of prisoners. The evidence gathered for this study of America’s first supermax suggests the need to evaluate beliefs and assumptions about the effects of confinement and the postrelease prospects for men serving time in the Rock’s successors.13

  EPILOGUE

  World War II initiated a period of enormous social change in America. A rush of new developments from the war experience along with the economic and demographic shifts resulting from the return of millions of demobilized military personnel and the conversion of industries to peacetime production infused virtually every intellectual current in the society.

  Along with many other aspects of government policy, established thinking about imprisonment and criminal sentencing came in for reconsideration and alteration. The policies embodied in the big house penitentiary with its focus on deterrence and control, of which Alcatraz was the prime example, began to be influenced by the concept of correctional treatment, which rested on the as-yet-untested assumption that a variety of psychological and educational programs would allow convicts to become rehabilitated during their imprisonment.

  This effort to apply elements of the rehabilitation philosophy at Alcatraz was evident in changes in policies related to inmate reviews, transfers, and parole. After Edwin Swope replaced James Johnston as warden, Bureau headquarters instructed Swope to assign a staff member to prepare “special progress reports” on all prisoners, initiate annual reviews of each inmate, and form a “classification committee.”1 As inmates appeared before the new committee, staff began to provide the first written reports of each man’s work, housing, educational and medical needs; his family problems; and his disciplinary record, including the loss and restoration of good time. These reports were prepared by the island’s first classification and parole officer. This posi
tion, filled by a succession of officers, was as close as Alcatraz ever got to having a staff member assigned to a noncustodial social service function.

  The classification committee began reviewing the status of veteran convicts, including Alvin Karpis, Harmon Waley, William Dainard, and Whitey Franklin. For the first time, terms like “adjustment” and “rehabilitation” appeared in written reports. The times were changing, but the skepticism of the custodial staff toward this new function was duly noted in this statement by the classification and parole officer:

  The custodial officer who has devoted most of his career to “guard duty”—and concerned himself primarily with that responsibility—is oft-times cynical and inclined to decry the efforts and mission of the classification group. Initially, we encountered difficulty with the described type [of custodial officer], and listened to volunteered criticism and suggestions, some of which seemed premised on the one-time theory of “Lock ’em up and forget ’em—that’s the treatment they deserve and expect!”2

  Accompanying changes in the field of corrections was a fundamental shift in the purpose of Alcatraz. As the need for a high-profile depository for the nation’s leading gangsters faded in significance, the prison became a convenient place to put serious offenders convicted in federal courts on the West Coast; in previous years these prisoners would have been sent to McNeil Island or to Leavenworth. James Bennett described the need for this change in the prison’s purpose to Assistant Director Frank Loveland after an inspection tour of Alcatraz in 1950:

  If we are going to keep this institution in operation, I think we have to change our policies somewhat about committing long-termers to this institution. Apparently, there are at present so few flagrant violations of our regulations that we are not going to be able to get enough prisoners to maintain the population in the neighborhood of 300, which I think is necessary to keep operating costs and other factors at a reasonable figure. While this, of course, is a point to be kept in mind, the most important consideration is whether the institution could not be more effective in serving as a deterrent to violent crime. As you well know, I am not a very strong believer in punitive measures as a crime deterrent, but, on the other hand, there is no doubt that fear of a strict prison regime has its effect on certain mentalities. If we receive an inmate who has a long previous record of violent crime, escapes and the like and whose most recent offense evoked a long sentence, I am inclined to think we ought to send him rather promptly to Alcatraz. This is especially true in those cases where there is little hope of parole. In such cases we should, of course, be more liberal in transferring them out of Alcatraz to other institutions. After the individual has had a taste, so to speak, of Alcatraz, he can be removed elsewhere if his record could justify it. As I indicated previously, I think too we have got to establish the principle that Alcatraz will be used for West Coast maximum custody offenders more frequently than for eastern offenders. Alcatraz will be a sort of Leavenworth or Atlanta for West Coast offenders.3

  This redefinition of the function of Alcatraz was one of the major factors behind the third change—the types of prisoners sent to the island. The inmate population had already begun to change during the war years, when military offenders, many of whom were black but had caused problems in other prisons, joined the previously largely white population. During the 1950s, racial and ethnic diversity increased and interpersonal conflicts produced more prisoner-on-prisoner assaults. A small number of new types of high-profile federal offenders—“subversives,” spies, saboteurs, and organized crime figures—took the place of the 1930s “public enemies.” Combined with changes in the character of the inmate population, these modifications of the program made the experience of doing time on the Rock rather different from what it had been during the height of the gangster era. The prisoners who came to the island after the gangster era still conformed to most tenets of the convict code, but not as faithfully, and they employed new forms of resistance, notably filing numerous complaints in federal court about the conditions of their confinement at Alcatraz.

  Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, the image of Alcatraz as barbarous and outmoded continued to plague prison and BOP officials. Robert Stroud’s sentence of life in solitary confinement became a cause célèbre with the publication of Birdman of Alcatraz and the movie that followed it. In June 1962 the sensational escape attempt by Frank Morris and the Anglin brothers, followed by another nearly successful attempt by John Paul Scott that December, gave the Bureau of Prisons the excuse it was looking for to close the prison, and operations ceased in March 1963.

  When Alcatraz closed, it was widely considered a relic of an outdated penal philosophy. But the principle this prison represented—isolating the nation’s highest-profile federal lawbreakers and the federal prison system’s worst troublemakers and most assaultive inmates in a super high-security environment—began to take on new life in the 1970s. In an effort to cope with the rising violence related to the increased influence of prison gangs and the drug trade, a “control unit” was established in 1973 at the federal penitentiary in Marion, Illinois. During the late 1970s and early 1980s Marion became the depository not only for the federal system’s most serious management problems but also for inmates who could not be controlled in the prisons in many states. As the trend toward higher security at the prison continued, the Bureau of Prisons, which had levels of security rated one through five, designated Marion in 1979 as its only Level 6 penitentiary. After the murder of two guards in October 1983, Director Norman Carlson ordered the Marion staff to terminate congregate activities and placed the entire prison on an “indefinite administrative segregation” regime, popularly called a “lockdown.” This change in the function of Marion represented the rebirth of the Alcatraz model. In subsequent years, the high-security regime at Marion has been replicated at thirty-six state prisons, including Pelican Bay and Corcoran in California, Southport in New York, and Tamms in Illinois.

  Was Alcatraz the toughest prison in America? In some respects it was. Rules for conduct were highly specific and even small infractions drew penalties that in the 1930s included confinement in underground dungeon cells. During its thirty years as a federal prison there was no television and no radio until headsets were introduced in the 1950s. No newspapers were allowed and the prison never had a commissary. Extreme controls were imposed on written communications and visits with family. No psychologists, social workers, teachers, or vocational training instructors were employed so no rehabilitation programs were ever offered. Boredom and isolation from the outside world were the burden of doing time on the Rock.

  Yet it can be argued that Alcatraz was not the worst place to do time even under the silent system in its early days. Interviews with one hundred prisoners and staff members revealed there were no sanctioned corporal punishments and no incidents of deliberate physical abuse of convicts. Brutal treatment and inhumane living conditions that characterized southern chain gangs, the convict lease system in the turpentine camps and prison farms, or the electric volts of the “telephone” at the Tucker Farm in Arkansas were not features of confinement in the federal prison system. The absence of polarized, politicized racial-ethnic gangs at Alcatraz was not the result of deliberate prison policy but of the prevailing social conditions of the time. Without gangs and with solidarity due to a strong commitment to the convict code, inmate-on-inmate violence at Alcatraz was relatively rare and seldom fatal as compared to the day-to-day tension and simmering violence characteristic of life in today’s prisons.

  Nor did confinement on the island approach the twenty-three-hour daily lockdown of the contemporary supermax. Television surveillance, electronically controlled gates, and individual barred and concrete exercise pens would not appear until the 1970s and 1980s. At Alcatraz convicts could get frequent direct exposure to the outdoors, cold and foggy as the Bay Area climate frequently was, when they walked from the yard to the industries area. The silent, air conditioned, wrap-around solitary confinement in cells with
solid front doors that is characteristic of supermax prisons was limited at Alcatraz to a half dozen cells in the disciplinary segregation unit. There was frequent daily contact between convicts and guards, often with large groups of prisoners going to or from the dining hall and work assignments. This close physical proximity is a far cry from staff-inmate contact in the modern supermax, where inmates only exit cells in shackles to shuffle down corridors between escorting officers armed with riot batons.

  The possibility of escape from Alcatraz was minimized by not only the staff-convict ratio and custodial policies, but by the physical features of a prison holding only 260 men on a very small island. Nonetheless the possibility of escape was always present and some of the best-known escape attempts in American penal history were planned and executed there. In the Alcatraz era a prisoner could look at nearby San Francisco and plot an escape. The electronic motion detectors, coils of razor ribbon, and hardened exterior of supermax institutions have essentially removed escape from consideration by contemporary prisoners.

  The means by which today’s supermax prisons control inmates is different from Alcatraz. Along with the demise of convict solidarity, modern technology makes isolation and surveillance complete around the clock. One result has been the concentration of inmates’ energy on aggression toward others in their immediate environment. Alcatraz convicts dreamed of going over the walls, floating along in the cold waters of the bay, and reaching the mainland and freedom. Most supermax inmates spend their time plotting how to counter “disrespect” and threats from other prisoners or how to get back at an officer who represents the controls imposed on them. The focus of the supermax fantasies is the closed world of the prison, not the outside world.