CRIME: Hardest Jail

Its rocky sides rising sheer as a battleship’s, swept by tidal currents too strong for any man to swim, a little island called Alcatraz dots the broad expanse of San Francisco Bay. Alcatraz means pelican. The island was used by the Spaniards as a harbor fortification. In its sandstone bowels are deep dungeons and underground passages. For years the War Department has used it as a military prison. Last week the island was transferred to the Department of Justice. Attorney General Cummings announced that its 600-cell jail would become the home of the nation’sworst criminals. The plan is to move the more intractable kidnappers, murderers, thieves and racketeers out of Federal penitentiaries and isolate them on Alcatraz “so that their evil influences may not be extended to other prisoners.” They will not be subjected to “unusual or unreasonable environment.” the Attorney General explained, and only real incorrigibles will be sent there. To Alcatraz will probably go Kidnappers Harvey J. Bailey and George (“Machine Gun”) Kelly to view Golden Gate sunsets for the rest of their natural lives. Alphonse (“Scorface Al”) Capone may be transferred there from Atlanta Penitentiary.* The Army keeps only two guards armed to watch over the 38 military prisoners now incarcerated on Alcatraz. Since 1858, when Alcatraz first became a military prison, only one convict has escaped. He dressed himself in mourning garments which he stole from the widow of a prison officer and, pulling a black veil over his face, got himself ferried to the mainland on the quartermaster’s boat.

*Federal Convict No. 14,431, writing in the October issue of Atlanta Penitentiary’s Good Words, expressed an oldtimer’s resentment of modern criminals and kidnappers. Why, he asked, should “longtimers” continue “to remain imprisoned and be classified with the racketeer of the present day? There are a good many ‘longtimers’ in here and other similar institutions who have had nothing to do with the outside or its affairs for many years, and it is these men, it seems, who will have to suffer and bear the brunt of public sentiment, because many years ago they made mistakes. Don’t blame the ‘oldtimers’ for what is going on in the outside world. They are innocent of existing conditions. . . . Let them share your joy in the New Deal.”