Alcatraz Read online

  When inmates were locked up at 4:45 P.M. each day, to remain in their cells for the next fourteen hours, the cell house fell silent. The only sounds were those of a toilet being flushed, the cries of sea gulls, the moan of a foghorn, and the occasional sound of a ship’s horn as it passed in or out of the Golden Gate. During these hours prisoners read books from the prison library; some painted (freehand or by numbers); many wrote brief letters to their approved correspondents, read again and again the letters they received from the same people, and sat on their bunks and thought. Alcatraz inmates did not come to the island of their own volition to pursue a calling, and during the long hours they spent alone they were more likely to relive the past and think about the future than they were to contemplate spiritual matters, but in other respects their lives were very much like those of monks. They ate at prescribed times, spoke infrequently, had little to do with the world outside the institution, were denied most sensual pleasures, possessed few worldly goods, and spent much of their time in contemplation.

  The designers of the Alcatraz program placed a high priority on preventing the kind of underground economy that flourished in typical federal and state prisons of the 1930s and 1940s. All manner of goods, banned and allowed, were bought, sold, traded, and wagered there (as noted in chapter 2). In addition to creating a discipline problem and providing a means of obtaining items useful for escape attempts, black-marketing tended to reinforce a socioeconomic hierarchy, in which inmates with the most power and access to financial resources could significantly ease the hardship of doing time. At Alcatraz, a simple but effective measure—never establishing a commissary—meant the absence of goods above and beyond prison issue. Inmates could not buy so much as a stick of gum, a candy bar, or a tube of shaving cream. Since eliminating tobacco would have invited protest, it was made available—in unlimited quantity of small cloth bags of tobacco to negate its value as barter.

  Inmates were allowed only a few items in their cells:

  • 2 pieces of stationery

  • 2 envelopes

  • 3 pencils

  • a sink stopper

  • a 75-watt lightbulb

  • a whisk broom

  • one and one-half rolls of toilet paper

  • a drinking cup

  • an ashtray

  • a cleaning rag

  • a wastebasket

  • a shaving cup

  • a comb

  • a bar of soap

  • a toothbrush

  • a can of tooth powder

  • a shaving brush and a mirror—and not one item more

  Contraband was defined broadly as “anything found on your person, or in your cell, or at your work place, which was not officially issued to you, or officially approved and purchased by you and officially listed on your property card.”11

  Isolation from normal society was an essential element in the conceptualization of Alcatraz. The island location clearly symbolized separation from the rest of the world, and to make this separation manifest, all means of communication with the free world—access to news media, visits, radio, or correspondence—were strictly limited.12

  The rules regarding visitors were far more restrictive than those at other federal prisons. Visiting privileges had to be earned, and for a prisoner’s first three months on the island none were allowed, not even with his lawyer. Thereafter, an inmate could visit with his wife or a blood relative once each month, with no more than two persons permitted to visit at the same time. Inmates and their visitors were separated on either side of the cell-house wall. They looked at each other through a thick, bulletproof window and—until telephones were installed in 1939—talked through a perforated voice box that required them to speak loudly enough to be heard on the other side of the partition. Inmates sat at the windows on chairs on the cell-house side of the wall with guards standing next to them to assure that the conversation did not stray to discussions of other inmates, to any aspect of prison life, to criminal activities, or to topics regarded by guards as “immoral.”

  Robert Baker was one of the guards who supervised visits. “When we started out it was six inches of concrete and three inches of glass between the inmate and his visitor. They had to talk to a little hole that was full of wire mesh like steel wool. You couldn’t put nothing through the wire, you couldn’t even blow cigarette smoke through it—there was no smoking anyway—but you couldn’t put nothing through this hole. The first three or four months they had no visits and then eventually they got one visit. After about five years, we got telephones and inmates could still look through this glass, it was about six by eight inches, and talk over the telephone.”

  Warden Johnston’s first drafts of rules forwarded to BOP headquarters proposed that no attorneys be allowed to visit their clients at Alcatraz, because any lawyer representing an Alcatraz convict was suspected of being a tool of the underworld or an unscrupulous character intent on making trouble. This prohibition was overruled on constitutional grounds in Washington, D.C., but the process by which an attorney could gain permission to meet with his client was made as slow and cumbersome as possible: the attorney was required to obtain written permission from the director of the Bureau of Prisons. In addition, verbal and written communications between inmates and their lawyers were not regarded as “privileged”; that condition, according to the Justice Department, pertained only to attorney-client communications before conviction. Prison administrators reserved the right to withhold any attorney-client correspondence if they deemed it was “being used for any social or business purpose or for any reason beyond legitimate and necessary legal communications.”13

  An inmate could order up to fifteen magazines from an approved list to be sent directly from the publisher, although all were screened by the mail censors for “objectionable articles.”14 In addition to prohibiting newspapers and radio and limiting visits, the third means of communication between a prisoner and the outside world—writing and receiving letters—was also tightly controlled. The rules severely limited the numbers and the content of letters to be exchanged by prisoners and their families. On arrival, each inmate filled out a correspondents list that could contain the names of up to five members of his immediate family. Other federal prisons allowed seven to ten correspondents and included friends as well as relatives, but at Alcatraz the only exception to the rule limiting correspondence to family members was for prisoners who had no relatives; they could request permission to write to a friend. The legal status of correspondents and their eligibility was to be investigated by federal probation officers in the cities or hometowns of the proposed visitors or writers. If it was determined that the person had no criminal record and did not have an “unsavory” reputation as far as local authorities were concerned, the Alcatraz staff was notified and that name could be entered on the approved correspondents list. Once the mail censor received verification of the accuracy of the relationship of correspondents, the inmate was issued three sheets of paper on which he could write, with a pencil, on one side only. Only one letter per week could be sent out. Harrell described the rules regarding letter writing:

  The cell block attendant would come by your cell and leave [writing] paper, an envelope and a pencil. . . . A short time later, the same attendant came by to pick up your letter and pen.

  Letters to lawyers were routed to the deputy warden and, if approved, counted as the inmate’s weekly letter. Inmates were warned, “Correspondence should be confined strictly to family and personal affairs or legal matters in connection with your own case, but shall not contain criminal or objectionable material . . . use full names not initials or nicknames . . . letters addressed to General Delivery will not be allowed.”15 Each outgoing letter was read and reviewed by the mail censor, who then typed a copy for the correspondent and retained the original in the prison files. (Retyping was deemed necessary, at least until 1940, to prevent secret messages from being passed in or out. Thereafter Baker, who served as mail censor for fifteen y
ears, began to test for hidden messages by “putting it [the letter] through a blue light.”) Incoming letters were also read and retyped by prison staff, and any words, lines, or sections regarded as inappropriate or objectionable were deleted by Baker or the guard acting as mail censor. “Objectionable” topics included “sex, crime news as well as profanity, secret messages, and length of letter.”16 Neither inmates nor their correspondents were informed if any part of the letters they sent or received had words, sentences, or whole paragraphs deleted. (Baker told the author that after reading letters to inmates for so many years, he realized that “the wives did not stick by their husbands.”) Like other privileges, the ability to write and receive letters could be removed for disciplinary reasons.

  The principle of isolation extended to the world within the prison. Compared to his counterparts at other prisons, an inmate on the Rock had far fewer opportunities for social interaction. The primary isolative feature was the use of one-man cells combined with short mealtimes, very little yard time, and the assigning of work as a privilege.

  When the prison opened, another important means of limiting social interaction was the “silent system.” Under this policy, silence was to prevail at meals, in the cell house, and on the job. Talking was permitted during yard time on Saturday and Sunday, during the eight-minute rest breaks that occurred each morning and afternoon for men working in the industrial shops or other jobs, and when work crews were assembled in the yard. Inmates could also engage in limited conversation when they needed to ask each other for tools at their work assignments, and in the dining room one man could ask another for utensils or condiments. Warden Johnston summarized the policy:

  We do not allow prisoners to ramble or loiter from cell tier to cell tier, cell block to cell block, or shop to shop. . . . [During weekend yard time] they are free to talk all that they want and as loud as they want in connection with their baseball games and horseshoe pitching . . . they can let off all the steam that they want and give vent to talking and shouting . . . anything short of trying to create a disturbance.17

  The silent system at Alcatraz was not intended to be part of a redemptive process, as it had been in the early penitentiaries at Auburn, in New York, and Eastern State, in Pennsylvania. It was simply a punitive element whose main function was to help maintain order. Prison managers were always looking for ways to control unruly prisoners, and for a population defined by long records of misconduct, they employed all means that might be effective. Silence was supposed to reduce opportunities for prisoners to plot escapes, plan strikes, obtain forbidden items, and develop other forms of resistance. The silent system, however, proved to be unenforceable at Alcatraz. For a group of convicts with little or no hope of release, who had already lost almost all of its privileges available in standard penitentiaries, the threat of being disciplined for talking did not have much meaning. This vestige of the old penal philosophy was scrapped a year or so after the prison opened, when one day in the dining hall all the inmates began talking at once.

  In addition to having comparatively fewer opportunities for engaging in the daily interaction with other prisoners that forged social bonds, built friendships, and sometimes produced conflict, inmates did not form relationships with guards—the people with whom they had the most contact or, in solitary confinement, the only contact. Harrell explained how inmates typically viewed the custodial staff and why their interactions were limited:

  Relationships between inmates and officers were cool—the majority of the inmates had very little to do with the officers. I didn’t care for any of the guards and I certainly didn’t want any kind of friendly relationship. The general climate at Alcatraz was not conducive to friendly relations between the guards and prisoners. That is not to say that the entire personnel was lacking compassion—there were a few guards that would give prisoners a fair shake but I arrived at Alcatraz believing that the personnel and prisoners were on different sides of the fence and I left feeling the same way.

  Maurice Ordway, then a junior officer, had a remarkably similar view of “fraternizing” with prisoners:

  I do not believe in fraternizing with prisoners, when an officer does so, he has everything to lose and nothing at all to gain. He is subjecting himself to “suspicion” from his superiors, even though the object may be anything but what it appears to be. A man [guard] who fraternizes with the men [inmates] under him only brings contempt upon hisself [sic]. . . . All any officer has to do is remember that he is on one side of the fence and the other man is on the other side, there can be nothing in common between the two. I believe in staying on my side and seeing that he stays on his.18

  Predictably, the prison’s enforced isolation, combined with the mind-numbing monotony of daily life, tended to exaggerate the importance of anything unusual—any event that broke the routine or offered the possibility of something different. All interviewees for this project remembered and enjoyed describing the extraordinary events that occurred during their time on the Rock: escape attempts, protests, demonstrations, and fights. These were dramatic events in any context, but they were particularly notable in a prison where so little else occurred, where staff were concerned primarily with preventing anything from happening that they had not planned. On four occasions during the prison’s first fifteen years, larger-scale excitement was provided by the murder of one prisoner by another. Besides providing drama, these incidents allowed for unlimited speculation because the motives for the lethal violence were often obscure. In addition, the subsequent prosecution and trial of assailants continued the saga and sustained interest long after the actual event.

  Even relatively mundane events could capture the attention of inmates as long as they were unusual or infrequent. The departure of a staff member or the arrival of a new “chain,” or group of prisoners, was usually cause for lengthy discussion. (The latter event was cause for hopeful anticipation because it also signified the likely departure of a few of the Rock’s residents who, until they were called out of their cells, did not know that they had been given transfers to other prisons.) Scuttlebutt spread among inmates and rank-and-file staff when an officer’s job was terminated. When new employees arrived, particularly anyone at the middle and upper management levels, it prompted much speculation by prisoners and officers about the qualities and character of the replacement with whom they would be dealing. When a certain captain moved on to an assignment at another prison, a senior lieutenant wrote in the day’s logbook, “X departed on a midnight boat—all staff were overjoyed at the blessed event.”

  Ripples of interest passed through the convict population when notable prisoners such as Al Capone, Harvey Bailey, George Kelly, John Paul Chase, and Alvin Karpis were transferred. Other events prompting weeks of talk among the prisoners were the construction of the new industries building and the remodeling of D block into a disciplinary unit. During World War II news about the war in Europe and against Japan was posted on a blackboard in the yard or the dining hall; these bulletins prompted speculation about Japanese air attacks in the San Francisco Bay Area given that antiaircraft guns had been mounted on the roof of the cell house. There were discussions of the occasional antics and outbursts of prisoners whose mental health problems led to their removal to the Springfield Medical Center and ongoing analyses by prisoners and staff of the personalities of prisoners and employees. And, there were always rumors that Alcatraz might be closed.

  RULE ENFORCEMENT AND PUNITIVE MEASURES

  Inmates who did not abide by the rules faced a number of possible punitive measures. The few privileges—a work assignment, a preferred cell location, the opportunity to go to the yard on weekends, the ability to visit and correspond with relatives—could be removed. More serious violations called for removal from B and C blocks, which housed the general inmate population, and confinement in disciplinary segregation, which meant being locked up in the old military cells in A and D blocks that faced the outside walls of the cell house.

  If an inmate
committed a particularly serious rule violation or continued to protest while in open-front (barred) cells in A or D block, he could be placed in a solitary confinement cell in those units. In those cells the last elements of normal living—food, water, clothing, verbal communication, and the light of day—could be taken away for extended periods. During the 1930s, solitary consisted of six retrofitted cells that faced the exterior wall on the third tier of A block and two more on the first tier of D block. The A block cells were constructed by simply pouring concrete into a wooden frame around the bars of the doors and the entire front of these cells, making them solid. However, in order not to turn these cells into concrete tombs a series of air holes were punched in the top of the concrete front and a heavy wire mesh screen was installed in the bottom quarter of the doors of the six cells. This opening allowed some air circulation and permitted the men locked inside to continue shouting to inmates in adjacent cells; although muffled, their voices could be heard even in the main cell house. On the opposite side of the cell house in D block, additional solitary confinement cells were created by constructing concrete vestibules around the grill fronts of two cells.

  While the last amenities of daily living could be denied to men in these solitary confinement cells, occupants continued to yell and pound on their doors. The problem represented by these disruptive sounds was solved during the first years of operation by removing the most intransigent prisoners to some barred alcoves in the basement of the cell house under cell blocks A and D, called the “dungeons” by prisoners and “lower solitary” by staff.