Alcatraz (72 page)

Several members of the BOP headquarters’ staff, including assistant directors Austin McCormick and Frank Loveland, were among those who expected only dire consequences for the Alcatraz prisoners. Their concerns were behind the Bureau’s efforts to periodically monitor the incidence of psychosis among the prisoners. Director James Bennett, however, remained skeptical of such generalizations, an attitude that was influenced by the personal relationships he developed with some Alcatraz inmates.
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Members of the Alcatraz custodial staff and even the inmates themselves also had a gloomy prognosis for inmates after their release into the free world, and they carried this view with them after they left the prison. When the one hundred former Alcatraz prisoners, rank-and-file custodial officers, and Alcatraz and Bureau of Prisons officials interviewed for the University of Minnesota study were asked, “What do you think happened to the prisoners when they finally returned to the free world?” almost every respondent expressed doubt that many of the men succeeded. These knowledgeable groups of men had direct experience with what was happening in the prison and knew that only a small percentage of inmates had shown evidence of serious mental health problems—unlike the reporters, outside experts, and pundits who insisted that Alcatraz drove prisoners toward psychosis—and yet they still believed that most inmates had failed after they got out. The prevailing view was that the prisoners had probably drifted back to their careers as lawbreakers
due to a lack of work skills and experience in legitimate employment coupled with their advanced ages and limited resources at release.

Another assumption was that they would have little or no family support: parents had died and wives had left them. Most interviewees cited anecdotal evidence of failures they knew or heard or read about, and the survivors explained how they themselves had succeeded. Nevertheless these men still held negative expectations about their fellow releasees, believing them not to be as determined, as smart, or as lucky as they were. Part of the reason for this view was the ready evidence of failure—the constant reaffirmation of seeing some former prisoners return—combined with the relative absence of evidence of success since those who succeeded were never seen again. In addition there was the well-known difficulty for all prisoners of staying out of prison. This tendency for negative examples to assume disproportionate importance in shaping expectations and views of outcomes underlines the need to systematically trace the actual lives of released prisoners.

Examining the Alcatraz inmates’ experiences after they left the Rock requires some understanding of the adjustments they made to life in the standard penitentiaries where three-quarters of them spent several years before they were released. Since many convicts had been sent to Alcatraz in the first place because of failure to conform, satisfactory adjustment at these other prisons (meaning no return to Alcatraz) was considered by Bureau staff to be an important measure of the effect of doing time on the Rock.

The federal penitentiaries at Atlanta, Leavenworth, and McNeil Island, Washington, were very different from Alcatraz. Used to the restrictions and deprivations of life on the Rock, the Alcatraz convicts appreciated, as other prisoners could not, the diverse recreation programs, the room to move around in large yards, the availability of candy, ice cream, cigarettes, and other “luxury” items, and the ability to listen to multiple radio stations and read newspapers and uncensored magazines. Following his transfer after twenty years at Alcatraz on October 27, 1954, John Paul Chase described his reaction to life at Leavenworth in a letter to former Alcatraz chaplain Joseph Clark:

Hello Father! Now that I am more or less settled down from my bewilderment, I feel somewhat safe in writing you without sounding like a complete idiot. I left Alcatraz on the 21st of September, and I saw for the first time in 19 years stars in the sky (and they were beautiful!) while passing through Wyoming. From the train window, my other “firsts” were cows in the fields, chickens, and even dogs. The big trucks and trailers high-balling
along the highways! Then at night-time, all the lights that light up the towns we passed. Then after arriving here, it was at midnight, the city of Kansas was a glittering with lights of many colors. My head was going around on my neck like an owl’s trying to see everything on both sides of the streets at once. The day after my arrival (ours I should say) we were showered with candy, cigars, cigarettes, soap, razor blades, toilet articles, cookies, and newspapers from the Alcatraz alumni who are sojourning here. I don’t know how I can express my reaction to the receiving of all those goodies. But as I look back now, there I was, right in the centre of all those luxuries I so often dreamed about and undecided just what or where to start making a glutton of myself!

And wonders of wonders, I’ll soon go to the store and select those articles and goodies I am able to pay for. We are permitted to purchase $12 worth each month. Oh yes, Father, the longest walk I have ever taken in 20 years was when I went to the yard and walked around the path that encircles the field. There was something about that walk that I can’t explain. Maybe because it was unhampered. Anyway, I can still feel my legs stretching out each step, just as free as free can be, inside these walls. . . .

I was first placed in an 8-man cell and it was quite an experience after 19 years in a single cell. I am now in a single cell and grateful for it. In my own cell I can move around and do those things a person gets into the habit of doing over the years, and without disturbing or imposing upon others.

Some more wonders! I have hot water in my cell, a set of ear phones. I can listen to the radio up ’til 10:15 each night, and Saturday and Sunday 11
P.M
. I have a chair, a real chair, to sit upon, a large writing board that is attached to, and folds against the wall, out of the way when not in use. I have a large closet built into the wall over the sink (which is large). There is an iron form unit that consists of two bunks, one over the other. They have springs and a large drawer fitted to each bunk. On the wall there is a row of hooks upon which I have a light coat and a heavy naval pea coat. While I am writing this, I am chewing up a bag of peanuts coated with candy called Boston Baked Beans, and there is 5 newspapers from different cities waiting for me to read ’em. In short, Father, I guess I’m really living compared to what I left.

As this leaves me, I have gained nine pounds since leaving Alcatraz and feel pretty darn good mentally, physically, and morally—what more can a man ask?
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Another positive feature of life in these prisons was the good—sometimes preferential—treatment Alcatraz transferees received from former Alcatraz guards, and even from staff who had never worked at Alcatraz but nevertheless accorded the Alcatraz arrivals respect because of what they had endured. When Willie Radkay went back to Leavenworth after six
and a half years on the Rock, he appreciated the reception he received from former Alcatraz officers:

I was first worried about the rules, but Nova Stucker—used to be the captain at Alcatraz—told me, “Listen, you don’t have to worry about rules. Those rules are for them young punks who are getting out of line. . . . You won’t have no troubles.” And he was right. They wouldn’t bother the old-timers and they treated the guys from Alcatraz well—“Hey, I want a single cell.” You got a single cell.
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In Jim Quillen’s view, Alcatraz convicts received special treatment and respect from prisoners and staff at McNeil Island:

I don’t know if it’s esteem or sympathy. Guys figure you’ve been deprived of something for a long time; they were sympathetic to the fact you’ve been under those conditions so they were willing to do more things for you. Guards were the same way—they figured that you’ve done a lot of hard time and now you worked your way back, you are entitled to a break from here on out as long as you stay within boundaries.
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Although inmates appreciated the good features of prison life they had been missing at Alcatraz, they discovered that transfer had its drawbacks. Most inmates, at least initially, had to share a cell with up to seven other men with diverse personal habits and personality traits, which spelled the end of years of privacy, quiet, and the ability to do what they wanted in their cells. In addition, the more open environment, increased congregate activities, and living in larger populations exposed transferees to more situations that could get them into trouble. In their interviews, inmates frequently cited the increased likelihood of encountering “assholes”—particularly aggressive, boisterous, younger inmates—with whom they could have confrontations.

As part of its 1962 audit of Alcatraz releasees, Bureau of Prisons staff examined prisoners’ “special progress reports” to determine how they behaved at the prisons to which they had been transferred. The audit concluded that 85 percent of the transfers had adjusted “satisfactorily,” 7.6 percent “erratically,” and only 6.1 percent “poorly.” The University of Minnesota study, which was able to draw from more complete records than Bureau headquarters, found that 47 percent of transfers did not receive any misconduct reports after they left the island, and another 31 percent received only one or two reports. After Alcatraz, the mean number of misconduct reports per inmate dropped to 1.6, compared to 4.5 reports during the prisoners’ pre-Alcatraz and Alcatraz periods of confinement.
A tabulation of placements in disciplinary segregation units as a measure of the seriousness of post-Alcatraz misconduct indicated that 70 percent of the transferees spent no time in these punishment units, and approximately 20 percent were locked up only once or twice. Clearly, most inmates “adjusted satisfactorily” after their transfer to other prisons.

The decline in misconduct after Alcatraz was related in part to the aging and “calming down” of the prisoners, half of whom were age forty or older at the time of their transfers from the island. Also, as release from their sentences grew closer, the Alcatraz convicts, like other long-term prisoners, appear to have become more circumspect, and their behavior more restrained. They did not want to jeopardize their placement in more open, far less restrictive regimes, and they definitely did not want to jeopardize their release dates—the end of their aggravation and frustration with daily life in all the federal prisons in which they served their time was now coming into view.

For old hands at doing time, moving between penitentiaries only meant adapting to a different set of restrictions, annoyances, and risks. Leaving prison life altogether was a greater challenge for the Alcatraz population. Most releasees had been behind prison walls for a large part of their lives, out of touch with technological advancements and a rapidly changing world. Many were well into middle age, with few work skills. For a large number, the wives, girlfriends, family members, friends, and associates who could have given them support had given up on them, moved away, or lost touch. And few people—including parole officers, the FBI, and local law enforcement officials—believed them capable of staying out of trouble with the law.

As has been noted earlier, a surprising number of convicts who served time at Alcatraz met these challenges successfully. The University of Minnesota study found that virtually half (49.7 percent) of the inmates imprisoned at Alcatraz from 1934 to 1963 stayed out of prison after being released. These men, for reasons outlined below, can be considered “successes.” Of those in the success category, 44.5 percent had no arrest record and 55.5 percent had only minor problems with the law—arrests or short-term jail confinement not serious enough to call for a violation of parole and return to prison. When this 50 percent success rate was determined during the course of the study, it surprised every participant, including former director Bennett and his successor, Norman Carlson. Contrary to all predictions, a large number of these habitual and incorrigible offenders had been able to overcome the odds and stay out of prison.

Not only did the Alcatraz inmates, as a group, fail to behave as expected after release, they also upset official predictions for who was most likely to fail and succeed. After each man had been sentenced, federal prosecutors had sent a “report of convicted prisoner” to the Bureau of Prisons that placed him in one of four categories based on the seriousness of the crime and his criminal record. Analysis of these reports showed that offenders with the lowest expectations—those classified as a “menace to society” or a “habitual criminal”—succeeded at a much higher rate (57 percent of these categories) than those considered to be only “occasional offenders” or “victims of temptation” (22 percent of those in both categories combined).