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| Guard tower at Alcatraz Alcatraz: Model Prison for "Public Enemies"? SAN FRANCISCO, CA—In a national radio address on October 12, 1933, U.S. attorney general Homer S. Cummings made the following announcement: For some time I have desired to obtain a place of confinement to which could be sent our more dangerous, intractable criminals. You can appreciate, therefore, with what pleasure I make public the fact that such a place has been found. By negotiation with the War Department we have obtained the use of Alcatraz Prison, located on a precipitous island in San Francisco Bay, more than a mile from shore. The current is swift and escapes are practically impossible. Here may be isolated the criminals of the vicious and irredeemable type. The attorney general's interest in an ultrasecure prison was based on the fact that during the early years of the Great Depression, an unusual crime wave had spread across the American Midwest. Banks that had weathered the stock market crash of 1929 were being robbed at the rate of two a day. The outlaws operated with flair and skill. Armed with machine guns, they re-created a frontier pattern of rapid assault followed by elusive retreat. Millions of citizens who were caught in a drab round of idleness and poverty responded to the criminal exploits with admiration. The bandits became folk heroes, and the names of John Dillinger, Frank Nash, Charles "Pretty Boy" Floyd, Bonnie Parker, Clyde Barrow, and George "Baby Face" Nelson quickly found their way into American folklore. But to the Federal Bureau of Investigation they were "public enemies"; to FBI director J. Edgar Hoover they were "public rats," "the lowest dregs of society," "vermin in human form," "slime," "vermin spewed out of prison cells," and "scum from the boiling pot of the underworld." Alcatraz appeared to be the answer. Was Alcatraz the answer? Was it ever a model prison? Where did it fit in the evolution of American corrections? Are there other kinds of prisons in the United States? What are the differences between jails and prisons? Historically and cross-culturally, the range of punishments imposed by societies has been vast. Over the centuries, the sanctions for even less serious crimes were exceedingly harsh, and the litany of punishments down through the ages has often been referred to as the story of "man's inhumanity to man."1 In early societies the death penalty was a universal form of punishment. It was commonly applied both as a deterrent and as a means of removing an offender from the community. Criminal codes from the ancient East to the modern West included capital statutes for offenses as trivial as adultery and petty theft. As recently as the early 19th century in England there were 200 capital crimes—ranging from murder and rape to larceny and disturbing the peace. The methods of execution went well beyond the diabolical and macabre, and they were often performed in public. This chapter traces the evolution of corrections in American society, beginning with corporal punishments of various kinds and continuing with the development of the prison system and its operation today. |