Ian
The Rock
Welcome to the Rock, the most famous prisons in the US history. The island in the San Francisco Bay was founded by the Spanish in 1545, and named Alcatraz after the word Alcatres, which means pelican. It remained under Spanish control until 1850 when the American government took control of the island and turned it into a military fort and later a military prison. In 1933 it became a federal prison and home for the next thirty years to some of America's worst criminals.
It was opened because the government needed a prison that was able to hold trouble-makers from other prisons and prisoners that had a record of escaping. The idea was to totally isolate hardened criminals from any communication with the outside world. It was used to keep all the worst criminals in one place. Alcatraz was an experiment. Isolating prisoners on this level had never been tried before. This was hoped to be a model prison.
This was the perfect place for a model prison because the surrounding
features limited communication and escape. The cell walls were thick. Each
prisoner had his own cell. Guards patroled night and day. Towers and walls
encircled the island. Cold water and strong currents also made escape virtually
impossible. Yet prisoners still did try to escape from the island. Out of
1535 prisoners in the history of Alcatraz, 36 tried to escape. Seven were
shot, two drowned, five were lost and the rest recaptured except for the
Anglin brothers and Morris who escaped in 1962 and were never found.
Although the people who escaped were never famous, Alcatraz did have famous people. One of the most famous was Al Capone. Alcatraz was the home to Mr. Capone for about four and a half years. He was a gangster and the leader of many criminals. At the first jail he went to he made many connections with inmates and outsiders. This threatened the police and guards who had to watch him. So the police transferred him to Alcatraz. There he could not make connections and would not be heard from for many years. Another famous prisoner was Robert Stroud mostly known as "The bird man of Alcatraz." He was sent to Alcatraz for manslaughter. He was sent to live in the hospital area where no one else was. He was sent there because he had evil fits a lot. So he spent many years in the hospital area studying birds and that's why he was known as the Bird Man of Alcatraz.
In 1962 Alcatraz was about to come to an end as a federal prison. The Bureau of Prisons saw that Alcatraz showed no way of rehabilitation to its prisoners. Alcatraz was getting very expensive to control. Another prison could be built and cost less to control the inmates. So in 1962, Alcatraz closed down and all across the head pages of newspapers in California it read, "Alcatraz closes." Today it is not closed anymore but it is not a prison either. It is now a state park and people can get tours of the island. Even though it's not a prison anymore it is still the most famous prison in the US.
