what is it like to teach at a prison
This is the real story of a prisoner at the infamous Alcatraz prison, incarcerated at the same time equally Al Capone.
This article was originally written in 1938 as told past Bryan Conway, No. 293 to T.H. Alexander and appeared in the April 1938 issue of Reader'due south Digest.*
I who has merely finished, as I have, a 12-year stretch for murder by and large tries to soften the facts in his record. Personally, I have no excuse to accelerate. I killed an Ground forces sergeant to protect my own life. I served ten years in Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, which was bad enough, and 2.0 months in Alcatraz prison, which was worse.
By comparison with Alcatraz prison, life was soft in Atlanta. The routine was not and then deadly, and the men had a chance to brand a few dollars in the mills with which to purchase processed and cigarettes. If they had more money they could get other privileges, also. Al Capone, for instance, lived similar a rex in Atlanta, and it was reported amid usa that he had coin brought in from Chicago by the suitcaseful. I saw several $100 bills which convicts told me Capone had given them for favors, and I know that he had a bodyguard composed of convicts. Information technology was correct comical to see Capone exercising in the yard surrounded past his baby-sit, every one of whom had a long knife or a blackjack. Such weapons were plentiful in Atlanta at that time.
All my friends had warned me against Capone. He is as unpopular at Alcatraz equally he was at Atlanta—not considering of the crimes with which he was charged only because he is a weakling and can't take it.
Some sentimental people like to think that kidnappers and murderers are looked down on by other prisoners. This just isn't truthful. Some of the nigh popular prisoners at Alcatraz are kidnappers—Alvin Karpis, Doc Barker, and Machine Gun Kelly, for example. Former-time wardens say that murderers are the aristocrats of crime. Speaking generally, there is no grading of prisoners by any social caste system prepare past themselves, with one notable exception. In any American prison, the men committed for sexual activity crimes are non accepted in the company of the so-called decent chemical element of criminals. The reason, however, is not that they have committed revolting crimes but that they are unstable, unreliable, and often actually insane.
From all I tin can larn, I was transferred from Atlanta because I would non testify as the government wanted me to at the trial of a convict who had stabbed another to expiry.
The first glimpse of Alcatraz prison fills a convict with grim forebodings. That bare rock rising out of San Francisco Bay has little vegetation. It is subject field to fogs and damp winds. I've seen guards wearing overcoats in midsummer. I am certain that part of the convict'due south dread of Alcatraz prison is due to adroit propaganda regarding the terrors of "the Stone."
In my cell block, I was given a warm welcome by the convicts, who seemed to know all nigh me. When I expressed amazement at their accurate cognition, a convict in a cell near me whispered: "We knew you were coming last week and nosotros knew you were a right guy, considering you wouldn't squeal on a pal."
The mysterious grapevine telegraph, which does so many queer things in prisons, works about entirely through bribery of guards or of convicts who have privileges. At Alcatraz, despite the lack of radio and newspapers, we followed the wars in Red china and Kingdom of spain. We learned sometimes of news and changes in American prisons even before they were officially announced.
The beginning bell rang at 6:00 a.yard. If it was your day to shave, you laid a matchbox outside the prison cell grille and a guard put a razor bract on it. A man had to shave in two or iii minutes, for the blade had to exist back on the petty shelf when the baby-sit returned. The 6:20 bong was the point for the count of prisoners—a really serious business concern which is washed every 30 minutes. Breakfast at 6:30 commonly consists of coffee, coffee cake, and cereal. Food at Alcatraz is much better than usual prison fare. For dinner, at that place is meat, beans, java, bread, celery; for supper, chili, tomatoes, and apples, with hot tea.
Seated at the aforementioned table with me were Motorcar Gun Kelly, Albert Bates, and others well known to the front page. And although talking at meals is prohibited, the men do manage to speak in a grumbling monotone out of the corners of their mouths.
I was assigned to work in the laundry and I received a cordial welcome from the men there when I reported for duty. Al Capone remembered me from Atlanta but I didn't encourage him. When he tried to give me a magazine I refused it and said: "Dummy upward, Al, dummy upwardly." This is prison house slang significant "Don't speak to me."
Capone looked at me for a second so replied every bit he turned away: "OK, pal."
Capone gets lonesome because he doesn't come in contact with many other men. He has lost weight, is said to be in mortal fear for his life, and is deprived of all the privileges he used to purchase at Atlanta.
My kickoff day I encountered the electrical device, unremarkably known as the "snitch box," which was designed to detect any metal on the person of prisoners as they pass through it. The only time I ever saw men laughing at Alcatraz prison was over these snitch boxes.
I day the snitch box sounded an alarm on every man who came from the laundry. The guards jerked each man out of line, searched him, and found nothing. It took hours to locate the trouble, which was merely that the car was and so finely adjusted information technology was detecting the metal eyelets in the men's shoes. A few days later it was silent when 2 men passed through with knives in their pockets. But the guards don't trust the "electrical eye"; they search every 12th man, whether the alert has sounded or non.
Afterwards nosotros were locked in our cells in the evening, and until "lights out" at about nine o'clock (I wouldn't swear to the exact time, because there are no clocks for prisoners at Alcatraz), in that location was plenty of time for reading. Some magazines are admitted, some are not. The convicts would prefer daily newspapers and detective magazines, which are never allowed. The most prized possessions in Alcatraz prison are newspaper clippings, which are passed from mitt to paw until worn out. Most of them concern prison house breaks and crimes.
Nosotros were permitted to write only one alphabetic character of non more than than two pages each calendar week. That had to be to a blood relative; no inmate could write to his sweetheart. We never saw the incoming messages, just copies or rewrites typed at the prison office.
Visiting, too, is drastically regulated. No company is permitted to shake hands with a prisoner or to bear on him. Betwixt prisoner and company is a screen and glass, and chat is carried on past shouting through a tube, ane baby-sit standing backside the visitor and another behind the convict.
Why do men dread Alcatraz? Because the subject field is every bit severe as it can possibly be. Literally, you leave all hope behind, for charity is all only unknown; only a few brusque-timers leave. Men go slowly insane under the exquisite torture of restricted and undeviating routine. And not and then slowly at that, because out of a total of 317 prisoners, 14 went violently insane during my terminal twelvemonth on the Rock, and any number of others were what nosotros telephone call "stir crazy," going nearly their familiar routine like dial-drunk boxers.
I saw ane instance of violent insanity. A convict working on the dock detail all of a sudden picked upwardly an ax, laid his left mitt on the block, and chopped off every finger. Then he laid his right hand on the block and begged the baby-sit to cut it off, laughing like a demon all the while. This man was still in the hospital when I left.
Adjacent to routine, one of the worst forms of mental torture is the target practice of the guards, carried on correct outside the cell house. This is an nearly nightly occurrence, after the men are locked in their cells. Men cannot sleep while these bombardments are going on. The guards always shot at dummies made in homo likeness, and these were left sprawled along the walkway with bullet holes in vital spots, as silent object lessons to "cons" who might be thinking of a pause.
Men cannot be held in check always, and trouble began to mash at Alcatraz in February 1936, and has continued intermittently to the present day. The mutiny last September was preceded by a need for the same privileges accorded in other federal prisons. The leaders spent weeks picking their men for the outbreak. You can't trust everybody, and sometimes even the strong weaken and reveal the secrets of their crowd. But virtually half the prison population finally joined in.
When the work call was sounded on September 15th, v men refused to come out of their cells to piece of work. They were hustled off to solitary confinement. On the following day, 10 men refused to piece of work afterwards they had reached the mat shop, sitting idle at their machines, and 30 men struck in the laundry. By Sunday 139 men were in mutiny and had been locked up on a diet of breadstuff and h2o.
The men in the lone confinement cells groaned and shrieked. Officials who asked them to render to work were howled downwards. So the officials cut off the h2o in those cells, and weather due to the lack of sanitation were frightful. The identify was a perfect bedlam, since the howling, shrieking, and cursing never abated, from night to morning.
They say, in stir, that anyone who lives in solitary longer than the time-tried limit of 19 days is tempting death, but dozens of them stuck it out longer.
The officials were desperately anxious to end the mutiny because at whatsoever moment a bloody revolt might interruption out. One day Warden Johnston was standing in the dining room, talking to united states while we ate tiffin. Every bit the prisoners started marching out of the mess hall, Whitey Phillips, a kidnapper, darted over to the warden, knocked him downwardly, and kicked him in the confront, breaking his nose. If this was a point for a general insurgence, information technology missed fire. At once the guards were on Phillips, and as the prisoners milled about in confusion, an outside guard bankrupt the window drinking glass and stuck his machine gun into the room. The prisoners, screaming, broke out of line and scurried to comprehend under tables and chairs. Thus subdued, they were lined upwards and marched quietly to their cells.
Presently subsequently that, alone confinement finer bankrupt the mutiny. One by one, the men began to abandon the strike, driven out by hunger, despair, and the terrible stench; although when I left the prison house in November, v stout souls were even so holding out in alone.
The plan for the next wildcat is clever. The men take decided that the vulnerable spot in Alcatraz prison is the shops, especially those having contract piece of work which must meet a commitment schedule. Hence, they will begin by suddenly wrecking the machinery. They call back they tin proceeds concessions past this, and they figure they have cipher to lose. What, for instance, has a human being got to look forward to who has three or more life sentences hanging over him? Well-nigh of them felt as I did: had I known, xi years ago, what I know at present about prisons, I'd have insisted on the capital punishment. Next, learn the incredible story of the only 3 men to e'er escape Alcatraz.
* Author'S Note: I know that Bryan Conway comes [from] an excellent family unit and that his Army record in France was practiced. Some of his comrades in the A.E.F. base told me Conway'south reputation was "a dangerous man, simply not a liar." I believe his story of life at Alcatraz prison is truthful, insomuch as information technology is possible for whatever ex-convict to be unbiased about prison house life. —T. H. A.
Source: https://www.rd.com/article/life-in-alcatraz/
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