Alcatraz
Authors: David Ward
ALCATRAZ
The Alcatraz Revolt, May 2, 1946
(see
Chapter 9
). 1. Coy and Hubbard capture Officer Miller and take his keys. 2. Hubbard releases Cretzer, Carnes, and Thompson. 3. Hubbard and Coy climb cage protecting armed officer and spread bars. 4. Coy captures Officer Burch and throws pistol to Cretzer. 5. Coy forces officer to open door between D block and main cell block. 6. Cretzer liberates thirty prisoners. 7. Reserve officers enter main cell house. 8. They are locked in a cell and later shot by Cretzer. 9. Coy attempts to shoot tower officer. 10. Officers block escape at rear of main cell house. 11. Marines guard prisoners in recreation yard. 12. Officers break through roof and drop grenades and bombs, dislodging Coy, Cretzer, and Hubbard from pipe tunnel. 13. Dead found in utilities corridor.
THE GANGSTER YEARS
David Ward
WITH GENE KASSEBAUM
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University of California Press
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University of California Press, Ltd.
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© 2009 by The Regents of the University of California
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ward, David A. –.
Alcatraz : the gangster years / David A. Ward ; with Gene G. Kassebaum.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN
978-0-520-25607-1 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. United States Penitentiary, Alcatraz Island, California. 2. Prisons—California—Alcatraz Island—History. 3. Alcatraz Island (Calif.)—History. I. Kassebaum, Gene G. II. Title.
HV
9474.
A
53
A
46 2008
365'.979461—dc22 2008021232
Manufactured in the United States of America
18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This book is printed on Natures Book, which contains 50% post-consumer waste and meets the minimum requirements of
ANSI/NISO
z39.48–1992 (
R
1997) (
Permanence of Paper
).
For Renée, Doug, and Andy
Introduction: Reconstructing the Life of a Prison
PART I
ALCATRAZ FROM 1934 TO 1948
1
The Federal Government’s War on “Public Enemies”
3
Selecting the “Worst of the Worst”
5
Organized Resistance: A Regime Tested
6
Finding a Hole in the Rock: The First Escape Attempts
PART II
LIFE ON THE ROCK FOR RESISTERS AND PUBLIC ENEMIES
PART III
ALCATRAZ AS AN EXPERIMENT IN PENAL POLICY
14
Lessons from Alcatraz for Supermax Prisons
My interest in Alcatraz—what it was like to do time there and how the experience affected prisoners in the long term—originated in the late 1950s, when I was interviewing prisoners and staff at the federal penitentiary at Terre Haute, Indiana, as part of a research team from the University of Illinois.
1
In the course of this study of five federal prisons, I also interviewed prisoners at Leavenworth, a long-established maximum-security penitentiary. There I met an inmate who had been at Alcatraz. Most staff and prisoners at Leavenworth viewed Alcatraz—still in operation at the time—as a kind of mystery prison, an island fortress where the most notorious, dangerous, and volatile prisoners from throughout the federal prison system were locked up under conditions of super-maximum custody.
Spiro Karabelas came to the interview from a disciplinary segregation cell. Having no better place to go, and enjoying the opportunity to smoke, he was quite expansive as he reviewed his experiences on “the Rock.” Among many topics that came up, he explained how he had learned to pass hours and days in solitary confinement by “taking trips”—reliving in his mind, in infinite detail and minute by minute, those days and events in his life he savored most. This was the first description of various psychological mechanisms for coping with prolonged isolation that I would hear in talking with Alcatraz inmates. Karabelas seemed to be rather proud that he had not been “broken” by the regimen. This comment provided my first insight into the view that doing time on the Rock was considered the ultimate test of courage and inner strength for a certain class of convicts.
The idea that going to and toughing it out at Alcatraz might, for some convicted felons, represent an opportunity to show that a man could take the worst that the federal government could dish out was brought home by another event that occurred while I was at Leavenworth. As part of my own research for a doctoral dissertation on prison rule enforcement,
I attended a meeting of the disciplinary “court” chaired by the captain. Included in the committee’s business were routine reviews of men who had been in “the hole” (disciplinary segregation or isolation) for a considerable time. In this case the inmate was brought from a dark solitary confinement cell into the hearing room, squinting his eyes in the bright light, a guard on either side. He raged from the moment he entered the room, announcing in a loud voice that he was not going to conform to prison rules, and yelled at the captain, “You might as well send me to the Rock!” The captain snapped back, “We’re not gonna send you to the Rock, you’re nothing but a kiddy-car bandit.” The implication was clear: a transfer to Alcatraz was for some convicts a badge of honor, something to be achieved.
My next encounter with an Alcatraz inmate came during the postre-lease phase of the University of Illinois study. I was stationed for a year in the federal probation office in St. Louis, Missouri, as part of the project’s plan to find out what was happening to men we had interviewed in prison after they were released and back in what they called “the free world.” One of these men, a Leavenworth parolee named Robert Robertson, had earned a long stint at Alcatraz by attempting to capture a crane being used for a construction project at Leavenworth in order to hoist himself and several other men over the prison’s thirty-foot-high walls. In the course of my discussions with him, Robertson talked about his years at Alcatraz, focusing not on physical or psychological deprivation or punishment, but on how the prison affected his criminal career. He described a life, before Alcatraz, spent “running around,” engaging in a rapid sequence of illegal activities interrupted only by occasional periods in jail or prison where the prospect of release in the not-too-distant future kept him oriented toward life and prospects on the streets. When he found himself at Alcatraz, Robertson realized that he wasn’t going anywhere for a long time. And with time outside his cell limited to three twenty-minute meals, an eight-hour work assignment, and a few hours in the yard on weekends, he was faced with many hours of distraction-free time alone in his cell. This, he said, afforded him an opportunity to reflect, for the first time in his life, on the costs and benefits of his criminal career and consider a different course.
