Alcatraz (22 page)

At 11:15
A.M
. work stopped, inmates marched back up to the cell house and their cells for another count, after which a twenty-minute period for lunch was allowed; at 12:00 noon men reported to sick call or for interviews with the warden, deputy warden, mail clerk, or the chaplain; at 12:30
P.M
. inmates marched back to work, where they stayed, with another eight-minute break, until the work day ended at 4:10. Inmates were back in their cells to be counted at 4:20, marched to supper at 4:25, and were back in their cells for a standing count at 4:50
P.M
. For the next fourteen hours of each day they did not leave their cells. By the time the wakeup bell woke them up the next morning, inmates had been subjected to fourteen counts in the previous twenty-four hours:

Floyd Harrell provided an inmate’s perspective on the daily routine:

On a weekday your day began about seven o’clock in the morning by the ringing of a bell. You were expected to get up, make up your bed, attend to your toilet, sweep up your cell. About fifteen or twenty minutes later another bell would ring and you were to stand at your door with your hands on the bars while the count was made. If the count was okayed, another bell would ring and you would wait for your particular cell block to be opened and you would proceed into the dining room for breakfast. After breakfast, if you were fortunate enough to have a job, you went out on the yard and lined up in certain places for the laundry, the tailor shop, and various other jobs, where you stayed until lunchtime. You went through the same procedure at lunch as at breakfast and then you went back to your job. You came back in for the evening meal with the same procedure. . . . After supper was over and the count was completed then you were free to do whatever you could do in your cell. That consisted primarily of reading.
⁶

Every weekday was virtually identical to the others (see
table 1
). Showers, issue of clean clothing, and shaving were the only regular activities that did not occur every day. Harrell described the shaving routine:

Twice a week the same attendant [who delivered writing materials] came by your cell with a board with numbered cells on it; your razor blade was on this board; he left this blade on your cell door. You were given a short time to shave, with cold water, and then the attendant would come by and put your razor back on the board.
⁷

Weekends offered slight variations on the weekday routine. On Saturdays inmates could go to the small concrete yard from 12:40 to 4:10
P.M
. On Sundays, the resident Protestant chaplain and Catholic chaplains who came over from the mainland held religious services in the small auditorium; these were attended by a handful of prisoners. After services, prisoners could be in the yard from 8:40 to 11:10
A.M
. In the yard, they played
softball, handball, and horseshoes, and those inclined to less active recreation found partners for dominoes, chess, or checkers, or just walked the yard. Movies were shown in the auditorium on the seven legal holidays each year.
⁸
The policy regarding movies was that “they will not be used for entertainment but may be employed by the Warden for education and improvement of the inmates when he deems it advisable in the interest of good discipline.”
⁹
Here is Harrell’s view of weekends:

The weekend days were somewhat different; after breakfast you had a few hours in the yard as well as after lunch. You had a choice of playing handball or softball or bridge or walking up and down in the yard or sitting and talking with your friends. . . . There was one guard in the guard house and one walking the catwalk around the yard; they were there to break up fights and they usually broke up fights by firing down on the yard.

Since a work assignment offered the only opportunity to be outside the cell for any significant period, it was a privilege that had to be earned. An inmate was first assigned a job that involved some routine maintenance task. Then, if his performance and behavior were “outstandingly good and of outstanding value to the institution,” he could be awarded meritorious good time and/or pay in addition to statutory good time; he could also be transferred to a job in the prison’s industries, which carried a small wage and extra good time, called “industrial good time.” For men without a job assignment—and this included anyone locked up in the disciplinary segregation units—there was little to relieve the boredom. According to Harrell, “the only thing they could do is sleep, read, or walk the floor.”

Few inmates’ days on the island were interrupted by visits with attorneys; no caseworker or psychologist ever called them in to discuss their early childhood experiences, their criminal careers, their home life, or their problems with authority figures. Outside of FBI agents investigating crimes committed on the island and a very small number of official visitors approved to tour the cell house or work area, no outsider disturbed the daily routine. The activities that began in prisons during the 1960s and 1970s—attending class, going to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous, the Toastmasters Club, or the black culture group, or attending individual or group counseling sessions—were never available on the Rock. No newspaper reporter or university criminologist called inmates out for interviews; the only conversations allowed with persons not employed by the federal prison system were with FBI agents or other legal authorities who wanted information, testimony, or confessions in other criminal cases.
Except for three twenty-minute meals each day and work activities, there was little to disturb the monotonous routine on the island. As Harrell commented, “any day in Alcatraz was twenty-four hours of pure boredom.”

With so much cell time, reading became the most common means of passing the hours. The Alcatraz library contained some ten thousand books, most of them left by the army. Inmates were not allowed to go to the library, but according to Harrell, “every prisoner had a catalog listing the books that were supposed to be in the library”; books selected would be delivered to, and picked up from, his cell. Newspapers were prohibited, ostensibly to remove the means by which the prison’s gang lords and notorious bandits could have their egos and reputations bolstered. Inmates could subscribe to certain magazines, such as
Popular Mechanics
, but because articles relating to crime were removed, the magazines were “often so mutilated by the censors they were practically useless.” When correspondence courses from the University of California became available, a small number of men signed up for them.

Reports from Protestant chaplain Wayne Hunter describe the inmates’ level of interest in correspondence courses and religious services offered on the island. In October 1936 forty-six men were listed as actively pursuing UC courses; another twenty were described as “enrolled but indifferent.” Most enrollees were taking English grammar or “shop arithmetic”; among those completing courses were Albert Bates, Ralph Roe, and Harmon Waley. Two months later, the chaplain reported that 17 percent of the inmate population was involved in various courses including new offerings in the rudiments of music, harmony, advanced shop mechanics, and beginning algebra. Elementary French and Spanish were added in 1937 and one course was dropped because it never had a single enrollee—“training for citizenship.”

Chaplain Hunter was also responsible for the institution orchestra, library, and recreational activities including the baseball league, horseshoes, and handball. Men interested in music had to choose between going to the yard on weekends or practicing on musical instruments; kitchen workers were allowed to practice during afternoons. According to the chaplain, thirty inmates were interested in “musical opportunities and of this number we have developed a 10 piece orchestra. The orchestra has played the three Sunday afternoon concerts thus far.”

Hunter reported that the addition of a Catholic chaplain, Father
Joseph M. Clark, increased biweekly attendance at Catholic services—from 33 on October 4 to 62 two weeks later. Protestant services attracted only 12 inmates on October 11 and 25. An April 2, 1937, report to Warden Johnston indicated that six men had attended Jewish services on March 27. A report in the same month to the Federal Council Committee on prison chaplains included the results of a survey of inmate religious preferences as Roman Catholic, 132, Protestant 131, Jewish 15, and 22 were listed as “no preference.”
¹⁰

In the April 7, 1937, report on prison chaplains, Hunter reviewed the programs and activities available to inmates at Alcatraz concluding, “The library is the most important part of the educational and welfare program in as much as reading is the only occupation of the larger percentage of the men during the evening hours. The library circulation for last month was 2045 books and 812 magazines. According to these figures, each man draws on an average of about seven books and three magazines per month. This does not take into consideration the private magazine subscriptions and book purchases.”

In addition to making the daily lives of inmates as predictable and routine as possible, the Alcatraz regime severely restricted the goods inmates were allowed to keep in their cells, their contact with the outside world, and their social interaction with each other. There were no evening programs or activities. Restrictions were intended to facilitate control of the inmate population and eliminate problems found in other prisons where association was allowed. Combined with the detailed scripting of daily life, serving time at Alcatraz was an experience that can be best described as monastic.

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