Go Directly to Jail

A month from now, one of the first things we are going to do when we get to San Francisco is to go to jail!.  The Alcatraz tours are so popular we already have our tickets. 

Alcatraz is a small island 1.5 miles from the city that was a federal prison from 1933 to 1963 and before that it served as a military prison going all the way back to the civil war.  Due to its isolation by the cold, strong, hazardous currents of the waters of San Francisco Bay, Alcatraz was used to house prisoners who caused trouble in other prisons.  Famous prisoners included  Al Capone, Robert Franklin Stroud (the Birdman of Alcatraz), George "Machine Gun" Kelly, Bumpy Johnson, Rafael Cancel Miranda, Arthur R. "Doc" Barker, and Alvin "Creepy" Karpis.

View of Cell Block

The island's most famous prisoner was probably Robert Stroud, the  "Birdman of Alcatraz."  In 1909, Stroud was convicted of manslaughter; while serving his prison sentence at the U.S. Penitentiary at McNeil Island, Washington, he viciously attacked another inmate. This resulted in his transfer to the federal prison in Leavenworth, Kansas. In 1916, he murdered a Leavenworth guard, was convicted of first-degree murder, and received a death sentence. His mother pleaded for his life, and in 1920, President Woodrow Wilson commuted the death sentence to life imprisonment.

 

Stroud's violent behavior earned him time in segregation. During his 30 years at Leavenworth, he raised nearly 300 canaries in his cells and wrote two books, Diseases of Canaries, and a later edition, Stroud's Digest on the Diseases of Birds. He made several important contributions to avian pathology, most notably a cure for the hemorrhagic septicemia family of diseases. He gained respect and also some level of sympathy in the bird-loving field who sent 50,000 letters to the President after a 1931 attempt by prison officials to shut down the canary operation. However, contraband items were found hidden in the bird cages, and prison officials discovered that equipment Stroud had requested for his "scientific" studies had actually been used to construct a still for "home-brew." Stroud was transferred to Alcatraz in 1942, where he spent the next 17 years (6 years in segregation in "D Block" and 11 years in the prison hospital). In 1959, he was transferred to the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri, where he died on November 21, 1963.

Doc Barker

At Alcatraz, a prisoner had four rights: food, clothing, shelter, and medical care. Everything else was a privilege that had to be earned. Some privileges a prisoner could earn included working, corresponding with and having visits from family members, access to the prison library, and recreational activities such as painting and music. Cells were 5 ft by 9 ft, but only held one prisoner which many prisoners liked since it allowed for privacy. Once prison officials felt a man no longer posed a threat and could follow the rules (usually after an average of five years on Alcatraz), he could then be transferred back to another Federal prison to finish his sentence and be released. 

 

During its 29 years of operation, the penitentiary claimed that no prisoner successfully escaped. A total of 36 prisoners made 14 escape attempts, two men trying twice; 23 were caught, six were shot and killed during their escape, two drowned, and five are listed as "missing and presumed drowned". The most violent occurred on May 2, 1946, when a failed escape attempt by six prisoners led to the Battle of Alcatraz.  Listen to a  radio story about this breakout.

Escape Cell with Dummy Head

On June 11, 1962, Frank Morris, John Anglin, and Clarence Anglin carried out one of the most intricate escapes ever devised.  Made famous by Clint Eastwood in the movie Escape from Alcatraz, Frank Morris and brothers John and Clarence Anglin vanished from their cells and were never seen again. A fourth man, Allen West, believed by some people to have been the mastermind, was also involved; however, he was still in his cell the next morning when the escape was discovered. An investigation revealed an intricate escape plot that involved homemade drills to enlarge vent holes, false wall segments, and realistic dummy heads (complete with human hair) placed in the beds so the inmates would not be missed during nighttime counts. The three men exited through vent holes located in the rear wall of their cell - they had enlarged the vent holes and made false vent/wall segments to conceal their work. Behind the rear wall of the cells is a utility corridor that had locked steel doors at either end. The three men climbed the utility pipes to the top of the cellblock, and gained access to the roof through an air vent (the men had previously bent the iron bars that blocked the air vent). They then climbed down a drainpipe on the northern end of the cellhouse and made their way to the water. It is believed they left from the northeast side of the island near the powerhouse/quartermaster building. They used prison-issued raincoats to make crude life vests and a pontoon-type raft to assist in their swim. A cellhouse search turned up the drills, heads, wall segments, and other tools, while the water search found two life vests (one in the bay, the other outside the Golden Gate), oars, and letters and photographs belonging to the Anglins that had been carefully wrapped to be watertight. But no sign of the men was found. Several weeks later, a man's body dressed in blue clothing similar to the prison uniform was found a short distance up the coast from San Francisco, but the body was too badly deteriorated to be identified. Morris and the Anglins are officially listed as missing and presumed drowned.

The prison closed in 1963 because of the high cost of operation and the age of the facilities.  It was was left abandoned. In 1969 it was occupied for two years by Native Americans who "claimed" the island based on the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie (a cool connection to our last trip) which promised to return all retired, abandoned or out-of-use federal lands to the Native peoples from whom it was acquired.

They started giving tours in 1972 and now more than 1 million people visit each year.

The audio cell block tours give the real life stories of the prisoners and you can visualize the escapes as you walk through the prison.
  
For an interesting site about the prison go to: http://www.alcatrazhistory.com/mainpg.htm

The people in my office will recognize this.  

Its a key

 

to an Alcatraz jail cell.  A replica is on the key ring for my office.