Wardens and Guards: Who Ran Alcatraz and How They Lived

A prison is shaped as much by the people who run it as by its walls. This page covers the wardens of Alcatraz, the officers who worked there, and the unusual community of staff families that lived on the island.

The wardens

In October 1933 Attorney General Homer S. Cummings appointed James A. Johnston, a well-connected San Franciscan, as the first warden. Nicknamed “Saltwater”, Johnston had a reformer’s record at the California state prisons of Folsom and San Quentin, where he ended corporal punishment and striped uniforms. He set the original standards of security and discipline at Alcatraz, and his successors departed from them to varying degrees.

• James Johnston, 1934 to 1948. He served fourteen years and retired in 1948.
• Edwin Swope, from 1948. Like Johnston he came from outside the federal system, in his case the New Mexico prison service.
• Paul Madigan, “Promisin’ Paul”, from 1955. He had risen within the federal corrections system and spent most of his Bureau of Prisons career at Alcatraz.
• Olin Blackwell, from 1961. He led an institution short of money and surrounded by rumours that it would close. Lax security during his tenure is sometimes cited as a reason three inmates were able to dig out of their cells and leave through the roof in 1962.

Where the guards came from

Correctional officer was a civil service job. Applicants who passed a government exam could be offered positions across federal agencies, and some picked the Bureau of Prisons.

The 1934 staff combined two groups. Some were new recruits, many eligible because they had been laid off from other federal work during the Depression, and others were experienced officers recruited or transferred from other federal prisons. Recruits trained at McNeil Island, while transferred officers travelled to California.

Alcatraz opened with the most troublesome inmates in the system, “the worst of the worst” in newspaper language, but it also received many of the best managers and senior officers from the same institutions. Over time, officers with promotion in mind learned that time at Alcatraz helped a career. Others found that different civil service jobs paid the same and were less stressful, so turnover was high, especially in entry-level positions.

Living on the island

Many officers and their families lived on Alcatraz, in apartments or, for single men, in a dormitory. Others commuted from San Francisco, but the island housing was in high demand because it was close to work and subsidised. Families paid about five dollars a month per room for a furnished apartment, and bachelors in the dormitory paid ten dollars, including utilities and laundry. This was far below comparable rents in the city.

Money was tight in any case. An officer earned about $1,700 a year when the prison opened in 1934, about $3,000 by 1950, and a little over $5,000 by the time it closed in 1963.

Residents valued the small-town feel, with big-city amusements a short boat ride away, as well as the views and the sense of safety. As the source puts it, the neighbourhood felt secure because everyone knew where the criminals were: behind bars.

School and social life

Children took a morning boat to school in San Francisco, as did working wives. The prison launch, first the General McDowell II and later the Warden Johnston, ran frequently until around midnight. An Army transport, the General Frank M. Coxe, also made regular trips on a circuit between Fort Mason, Alcatraz and Angel Island.

Staying on the island did not mean a dull social life. Children had plenty of places to explore, and a recreation hall hosted parties and gatherings and had a two-lane bowling alley.

The work

Assignments ranged from the loneliness of sitting in a high tower all night watching the dark to standing among hundreds of inmates in the recreation yard. Officers were rotated through different posts and schedules four times a year. Routine tasks included tapping cell bars with a mallet to check whether they had been cut, counting men in the cellhouse every hour overnight, searching dirty laundry for contraband, and standing in a gun gallery watching inmates at a holiday movie.

Learn more about how the staff dealt with threats in maximum custody, and about incidents in riots and strikes and escapes.