How Life at Alcatraz Changed: Silence, War and Easing Rules

The Alcatraz of 1934 and the Alcatraz of 1962 were not the same place. This page follows the changes: the early dungeon and the rule of silence, public criticism, the Second World War, and the gradual relaxation of the regime.

Was there a dungeon?

When the penitentiary opened, the Bureau of Prisons assumed that moving its roughly 250 worst troublemakers to a barren island would be enough, and no special punishment area was planned. When rules were broken, the staff improvised. They used existing isolation cells from the military blocks, including cells in the original D Block and dark cells on the third tier of A Block. Serious offenders were sometimes taken beneath the cellhouse to an old military segregation area that inmates called the Dungeon. In fact it was the old foundation of the Army’s citadel, a set of storerooms and cells left from before the cellhouse existed.

Why Warden Johnston softened his approach

The harsh early policies, silence in the cellhouse and the dungeon for punishment, did not work well. Inmates found ways to talk, even through emptied toilets and the pipes connecting them, and guards came to see the silence rule as nearly impossible to enforce. The dungeon had a frightening name but was actually a weak point in security. It depended on damp old brick, and men had to be shackled to stop them from digging out.

The policies also began to look severe. Alcatraz operated under tight secrecy for the first few years, but by the late 1930s released inmates were telling stories to the public and to elected officials, and some listeners were outraged. In 1939 the new Attorney General, Frank Murphy, wanted the place closed, saying the whole institution encouraged a sinister and vicious outlook among prisoners.

Johnston responded by relaxing the silence rule. Meanwhile the Public Works Administration put more than a million dollars into upgrades, much of which went into converting D Block into the high-security Treatment Unit.

A gradual easing

Overall, conditions became easier. At first inmates could not speak at all in the cellhouse. Later they were allowed quiet conversation, though loud talk, shouting, whistling and singing were still banned. After 1940, and especially once Johnston retired in 1948, men gained more yard time, radio access, extra magazines, musical instruments, art supplies and movies twice a month.

The war years

Anti-aircraft guns on the roof made it clear that wartime would not be normal. Guards who joined the armed forces were replaced by new hires and returning retirees. Johnston posted a bulletin board outside the mess hall with news of major developments in the war.

Prison Industries were expanded for military needs, including more uniform sewing, cargo nets for amphibious landings and repairs to buoys for the submarine nets across the Golden Gate. Inmates began receiving a few cents an hour, and many used the money for war bonds. Food rationing reached the island, as elsewhere, and caused grumbling. The men generally backed the war effort, although some reports mention vandalism at work as a protest against using inmate labour for military goods.

Why it got easier

The gangster era belonged to the 1930s and 1940s, and in those years nobody questioned the cost or severity of Alcatraz. Director Bennett called the inmates “tough hombres” who were beyond reform, and the public wanted action regardless of expense.

Over time the few gangsters left grew older and the budget became hard to defend. The later population was made up of troublemakers from other prisons, but they were less famous. Bank robberies were less frequent, and kidnapping had dropped sharply because of the FBI and the death penalty. Postwar prosperity eased the Depression-era fixation on crime and punishment, and as public pressure fell, so did prison budgets. Politicians, judges and administrators also adopted new thinking about corrections, modernised institutions and eased rules at many prisons, Alcatraz among them.

Alcatraz versus prisons today

Alcatraz was smaller, stricter and had less turnover than modern prisons. The deeper difference, as the source of this material describes it, is that inmates once stood together against the administration, whereas today they are split into gangs. Former Alcatraz men said that they feared later prisons, not because of rules, but because the old code of “solid cons doing their own time” had given way to an environment where inmates feared each other more than the guards.

For the closing chapter, read about why Alcatraz closed, or return to minimum privileges.