Minimum Privileges: Mail, Books, Work and Visits at Alcatraz

Under the Alcatraz system, anything beyond food, clothing, shelter and medical care had to be earned. This page describes the privileges that good behaviour could win and how limited they were.

Letters

An inmate in good standing could send two letters a week and receive seven from approved correspondents. Outgoing mail was monitored and censored. Incoming letters were reworded and retyped on prison stationery so that no coded message could get through. Since outgoing envelopes carried an Alcatraz postmark, some men said they felt uneasy writing to relatives in small towns.

Books, magazines and newspapers

The library moved next to D Block in the 1940 remodelling and held around 15,000 volumes, many inherited from the military prison. Titles dealing with sex, violence or crime were excluded, and most readers got through seven or eight books a month. A closed-stack system meant men chose from a catalogue and an orderly delivered the books. The chaplain ran the library for much of the period and chose its stock, so it leaned toward wholesome reading. Basic legal references were available, and later a small law library was set up in A Block.

Newspapers were not allowed for most years. Approved magazines could be ordered, with references to sex, violence and crime removed. According to reports, in the early 1960s the censor overlooked some articles with design and production tips that helped inmates build a crude flotation device from raincoats, which was used with doubtful success in the 1962 Morris and Anglin escape. A cell could hold twelve books and six magazines, and magazines could be passed along to others.

Work

Warden Johnston observed that men are sent to prison for reasons other than their job skills, so matching people to tasks was difficult. Some worked in the cellhouse, mainly cooking and cleaning, and others on the dock or maintenance crews. More than half were employed in Prison Industries, in factories at the northwestern end of the island.

There were laundry and dry-cleaning operations serving military personnel around the bay, as well as production of shoes, gloves, rubber mats, brooms, brushes and furniture, plus raincoats and other clothing for inmates and soldiers. In the Second World War the mat factory was adapted to produce cargo nets for the Merchant Marine and Navy, and inmates repaired buoys used to anchor anti-submarine nets beneath the Golden Gate Bridge.

Weather also played a part. When fog was thick enough that guards could not properly watch the walk from cellhouse to factories, work was cancelled and the men “laid in”, spending the day in their cells.

Religion

Chaplains held Sunday services, alternating between Protestant and Catholic clergy week by week, and a rabbi came for Jewish holidays. Attendance was highest when services were the only alternative to sitting in a cell. As yard time grew in later years, chapel reportedly lost some of its audience.

Visits

A man who had earned the privilege could receive one visit per month from an immediate family member aged 16 or over with no criminal record, a rule that eliminated every possible visitor for some. Many inmates received no visitors at all. They came from poor backgrounds and distant places, and travelling to Alcatraz for an hour-long visit by telephone through glass was costly. Relatives coming a long way could ask for back-to-back visits on the last day of one month and the first day of the next. Lawyers with cases in progress met clients face to face, at first in the visiting area and later in a special cell in A Block.

The recreation yard

Some men always played baseball or handball, but most walked with friends, talked in small groups or played bridge. Staff added equipment from time to time, such as basketball, tetherball or shuffleboard, and weights appeared in the final years. With limited space and more than 200 men, most preferred conversation. Yard time grew over the years, from most of Saturday and a few hours on Sunday to the whole of both days.

Education and rehabilitation

Warden Johnston introduced a successful programme of correspondence courses, but there was nothing that could be called rehabilitation. The island was set up for custody and punishment. Only after returning to their original prisons could inmates join on-site rehabilitation programmes.

Next, see maximum custody, the mess hall or how times changed.

The bigger picture

Each privilege on this page was a lever. A man who wanted mail, books or a visit had to behave, and one who did not could lose them, which kept discipline in order without constant force. The approach fitted the larger principle explained on the penitentiary opening page, where basic needs were guaranteed and everything else was earned.