Alcatraz (55 page)

The first cluster of maxims involved group identification and solidarity. These directed a convict to be loyal to his “class,” namely himself and his fellow convicts. As Sykes and Messinger put it, “Prisoners must present a unified front against their guards no matter how much this may cost in terms of personal sacrifice.” The most important rule in this category was the prohibition against betraying a fellow convict to institutional officials, summarized by the rule Never Rat on a Con. Related maxims included Don’t Be Nosy; Don’t Have a Loose Lip; Keep Off a Man’s Back; Don’t Put a Guy on the Spot. All these directives existed to protect inmate interests, which according to Sykes and Messinger consisted mainly of “serving the least possible time and enjoying the greatest possible number of pleasures and privileges while in prison.”

The second set of maxims instructed convicts to “refrain from quarrels or arguments with fellow prisoners.” They included Don’t Lose Your Head, Play It Cool, and Do Your Own Time. Sykes and Messinger pointed out that these maxims emphasized the control of emotions (they used the term “curtailment of affect”). They also noted that these rules were subject to exceptions: if an inmate confronted a “legitimate provocation,” the need to maintain self-respect might demand a response.

In the third category were maxims prohibiting inmates from taking advantage of one another “by means of force, fraud or chicanery.” They included the following: Don’t Break Your Word; Don’t Steal from a Con; Don’t Sell Favors; Don’t Be a Racketeer; Don’t Welsh on Debts. According to Sykes and Messinger, these prohibitions were all related to an ideal: “inmates should share scarce goods in a balanced reciprocity of ‘gifts’ or ‘favors,’ rather than sell to the highest bidder or selfishly monopolize any amenities.”

The fourth cluster of maxims revolved around the theme of “the maintenance of self.” These maxims, best summarized by Don’t Weaken, indicated the high value placed on maintaining personal dignity and withstanding “frustration or threatening situations without complaining or resorting to subservience.” The maxims in this category—such as Be Tough: Be a Man—emphasized courage and tenacity as essential elements of self. These values tended to trump the value placed on avoidance of conflict. As Sykes and Messinger put it, “Although starting a fight runs counter to the inmate code, retreating from a fight started by someone else is equally reprehensible.”

Finally, the fifth category defined the inmates’ value system in opposition to that of the world of the authorities. For Sykes and Messinger the maxims in this cluster “forbid according prestige or respect to the custodians or the world for which they stand.” Best represented by the maxim Don’t Be a Sucker, they express contempt for “the values of hard work and submission to duly constituted authority” and express the general attitude that “guards are
hacks
or
screws
and are to be treated with constant suspicion and distrust.”

The events recounted in previous chapters provide examples of how strongly the convict code—particularly its prohibition against incriminating fellow convicts—affected the behavior of Alcatraz convicts. Inmates in various industries shops provided materials to the plotters preparing several escapes and had information about plans, including the takeover of the cell house in May 1946. When Hamilton, Cretzer, Barkdoll, and Kyle tried to escape from the model building in 1941, inmates who were witnesses never provided the information that would have implicated Hamilton in the plot, allowing him to avoid the punishments given the other plotters. Similarly, other prisoners in D block before the escapes of Barker, Stamphill, Young, McCain, and Martin were well aware that cell bars were being severed. It was especially obvious that something unusual was happening because the plotters emerged from their cells a number of times to work on cutting the bars covering the window. In none of these cases did any inmate try to gain a transfer or to increase his chances for a parole by giving information to the staff.

Like all value systems that spell out an ideal for conduct, the convict code was sometimes violated, even at Alcatraz. The degree to which inmates adhered to the code had implications for the complex of roles that comprised the structure of the inmate community. Those who strictly abided by all the code’s tenets were “good cons,” “right guys,” or, as Sykes and Messinger put it, the “heroes of the inmate world.” These men earned not only the respect of their fellow convicts but also in many cases the respect of the staff, since in being good cons inmates were expressing some of the same basic working-class values held by the staff. Alcatraz convicts who achieved this status in a population comprised almost entirely of high-status convicts from across the country, men like Harvey Bailey, Floyd Hamilton, Charlie Berta, and Arnold Kyle, were characterized by strong personalities and outstanding careers as bank robbers and as escape artists. Although they had an affinity for risk taking, they were smart in assessing the costs and benefits of various courses of
action. As bank robbers they were accustomed to exercising caution and care in planning their activities. In their lives before Alcatraz, their intelligence, personal charisma, and fearlessness had led others to seek them out as partners in criminal enterprises.

The inmates who violated the rules of the convict code had decidedly different roles in the convict community. Those who provided information to the staff about other inmates—the informers or rats—earned the contempt of their fellow inmates (and to a certain extent that of the staff ). The ostracism, threats, and physical abuse directed at Rufe Persful was an example of the consequences of betraying fellow prisoners. There was also a small group of prisoners who fought with their fellow inmates or with staff for no obvious reason—thus violating the maxims Don’t Lose Your Head and Do Your Own Time. Some of these men were admired for their continual confrontations with the regime, but the actions of others were seen as serving no greater purpose for the population at large and only served to make the perpetrators’ lives more difficult. The most notorious of these “outlaws” will be described in the next chapter. Finally, there were the “crazies” or “bugs,” whose erratic actions demonstrated an inability to show toughness and courage and stand up to the challenge of doing big time.

It should be noted that during the gangster years there was also a small number of men who were regarded by the general inmate population as outsiders by virtue of the fact that they did not share the working-class backgrounds and values of their fellow convicts and were imprisoned on the island for different reasons. Included in this group were several spies and some military prisoners who could not be controlled in military prisons but had long sentences for sex offenses, primarily rape, and were sent to Alcatraz during and immediately following World War II. These men had not violated federal laws for financial reasons, and since the Alcatraz convicts endorsed the traditional value of patriotism, several of the Nazi “saboteurs” were threatened or attacked on the yard and sex offenders were always treated with contempt.

As
chapters 4
through
9
have made very clear, the Alcatraz convicts did not simply acquiesce to the rules and restrictions imposed on them by the prison regime. The work strikes, food strikes, organized protests, escape attempts, disturbances, and individual acts of defiance described in those chapters show that resistance in its varying forms was a defining
feature of life on the Rock, and a major determinant of the prison’s historical development.

Acts of disobedience began almost as soon as the first shipments of convicts from Leavenworth and Atlanta arrived on the island and continued in one form or another throughout the prison’s thirty-year history. Many of these acts were purely individual—a particular inmate refusing to obey a certain rule, for example. And many were collective efforts in which groups of inmates acted together, planning, strategizing, and coordinating activities. Both individual and organized resistance constituted direct challenges to the authority of the staff and clearly communicated the determination of the inmates not to passively submit to the existence on the island the Bureau of Prisons planned for them.

Bureau officials and Warden Johnston, of course, should have expected that of all inmates in the federal prison system, those selected for placement at Alcatraz would be the least likely to accept the excruciating degree of control over their activities envisioned by the regime’s designers. Placing these troublemaking, defiant, escape-prone inmates in a prison with the most restrictive set of rules established in any American prison of its day was an explosive combination. Seen in this light, what is perhaps most surprising about Alcatraz’s history is not the fact of inmate resistance but the relative peacefulness that prevailed for long periods of time in between episodes of confrontation. Understanding how inmate resistance could be a defining feature of life at Alcatraz without continuous and pervasive overt conflict between inmates and guards requires a closer examination of the phenomenon of resistance.

All prisons, regardless of their ultimate goals, engage in a fundamental activity: they endeavor to control inmate conduct. How a prison organizes the means for this control determines, more than any other factor, how it differs from other prisons. Alcatraz was distinctive in that it had the authority to employ an exceptionally wide variety of coercive sanctions for the direct control of behavior. But direct observation of actual prison life makes it clear that
resistance
to control is another fundamental dimension along which prisons vary. No prison has achieved complete conformity, and theoretically no prison ever could. Inmate conformity to rules is variable. No silent system was really silent; contraband flourishes in all lockups; prison rules are routinely violated; overt resistance, escape attempts, and various forms of individual and group rebellion are as much a feature of prisons as is control.

Neither full control nor effective resistance can be assumed. In many prisons of this era dominant groups of inmates exploited other inmates;
in some prisons staff entered into cooperative arrangements with certain prisoners to obtain information or cooperation. Some guards were intimidated and even at Alcatraz several officers became involved with prisoners by smuggling contraband in and out of the prison for them.
⁷
In some state prisons administrators gave up control inside prison walls to powerful convicts.
⁸
There were no such leaders or bosses at Alcatraz—a fact that was demonstrated when Alvin Karpis stepped forward to represent the interests of his fellow food strikers; this effort at leadership was promptly rejected by the custodial staff who locked Karpis up in disciplinary segregation and by the other strikers who did not recognize any other prisoner as their boss.

The phenomenon of control in prisons has received much attention from philosophers and sociologists. Jeremy Bentham and, more recently, the French philosopher Michel Foucault have portrayed the prison as a machine capable of minutely controlling all aspects of prisoners’ existence. An alternative to the notion of the prison as an omnipotent machine has been provided by sociologist Erving Goffman, whose conception of the “total institution” highlights how inmates work out particular arrangements through a variety of devices and thereby fashion a mode of prison life more in line with their own needs and interests. But Goffman does not concern himself with evasion of rules by inmates or with effective control of inmate resistance.
⁹
To achieve a more complete view of prison life, it is necessary to conceive of the dimensions of control and resistance to control as existing in opposition to one another, always in tension, each shaping and affecting the other.

The reality of prison life at Alcatraz fits this conception. The custodial staff was never completely successful in enforcing rules, and the inmates were never completely successful in developing structured resistance. Attempts to implement a high level of control were met with active inmate resistance; the result could be a softening of control or suppression of the active resistance with a reimposition of control. A good example of this dynamic that was resolved in favor of the inmates was the silent system, which was an attempt to impose an extreme level of control, but inmate resistance to it was so strong and took so many forms, most notably when every convict began talking in the mess hall, that the administration abandoned it as unenforceable.

The push-and-pull nature of the power struggle, however, was not
always active and overt. The conflict between the forces of control and resistance found levels of equilibrium that were stable for relatively long periods of time, until new or different challenges arose. The fact that no overt struggle was taking place during these periods did not indicate any diminishment in the inherent, underlying conflict—nor in its power to shape social relations in the prison.

The convict code played an important role in modulating the conflict between inmates and staff. The element of convict culture represented by the maxim Do Your Own Time meant to staff that an inmate should stick to himself and refrain from becoming involved in any organized activities, protests, or plots. An inmate following this directive would not present a custodial problem, but the convicts’ interpretation of this maxim was: do not interfere with any plot or activity involving another convict. In other words, mind your own business and don’t screw anything up for another prisoner.

An aspect of the convict code that tended to reduce overt conflict was the tenet that directed inmates to be tough and courageous—to face stoically the deprivations of prison life. As long as circumstances allowed inmates to see prison life as a test of their manhood, as a challenge to which they could rise, the tendency to engage in active resistance or confrontation was somewhat mitigated.

Other components of the convict code, however, pushed in the opposite direction, encouraging resistance. Maintaining self-respect tended to call for resistance, as did identifying with others as members of a group whose interests were opposed to those of the staff and refusing to accept the values of the regime that legitimized the prison’s existence. For Warden Johnston and the Bureau of Prisons, the explicit purpose of the Alcatraz regime was to counter these attitudes and prevent the misconduct they produced; but the history of Alcatraz is the history of efforts by the prisoners to deny that purpose.