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Nov 27, 2019 · Former Alcatraz Inmates List. The National Archives at San Francisco holds comprehensive inmate case files, prisoner identification photographs, and warden's notebook pages for most listed inmates.
An inmate register reveals that there were 1576 prisoners in total which were held at Alcatraz during its time as a Federal Penitentiary, between 1934 and 1963, although figures reported have varied and some have stated it to be 1557.
- The Hopi Nineteen
- Frank Lucas Bolt
- Al Capone
- Robert Stroud, A.K.A. The 'Bird Man' of Alcatraz
- Morton Sobell
- Robert Lipscomb
- Ellsworth 'Bumpy' Johnson
In 1894, when Alcatraz was still operating as a military prison, the U.S. government arrested 19 Hopi men for refusing to send their children to American assimilation boarding schoolsalmost 1,000 miles away from their reservation in Oraibi, Arizona. From the late 19th century well into the 20th, the federal government, following a policy of “save t...
Little has been documented about Alcatraz’s LGBTQ+ prisoners, but gay men did play a role in the infamous prison. In fact, it was a queer man, Frank Lucas Bolt, who served as the prison’s first official inmate. Bolt was serving in the U.S. Army in Panama when he was convicted of sodomy in 1932 and sent to serve time at a Pacific area military priso...
For notorious Chicago-based mobster Al Capone, doing hard time before Alcatraz was rarely that hard. During earlier stints in Atlanta and other prisons, Capone had recruited guards to work on his payroll and enjoyed special privileges—from home-cooked meals and cushy bedding to unlimited access to the warden. That all stopped when Capone arrived at...
By the time Robert Stroud was transferred to Alcatraz in 1942, he had already established himself as one of the most dangerous—and notorious—prisoners in America, with a rap sheet already decades long. Stroud first entered the penitentiary system more than 30 years earlier, in 1909, when he was convicted of murder and imprisoned in Washington State...
At the height of the Cold War, Morton Sobell was sent to Alcatraz after being convicted, alongside Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, of espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union. Though nailed for conspiracy, Sobell wasn’t convicted of providing the Soviet Union with stolen nuclear secrets like the Rosenbergs. Still, FBI DirectorHoovercalled Sobell’s offen...
By the time Robert Lipscomb arrived at Alcatraz in 1954, the African American Cleveland native had spent most of his adult life in midwestern prisons for auto theft and counterfeiting. Suffering from paranoia, depression and an abusive childhood, Lipscomb was declared psychotic and institutionalized by the age of nine. A psychiatric evaluation, how...
Infamous Harlem crime boss Ellsworth Raymond “Bumpy” Johnson was another of the many oft-overlooked Black inmates housed on the Rock. Johnson came to Alcatraz in 1952, at the height of his reign as the so-called “Godfather of Harlem,” after he was sentenced to a 15-year stint for a drug conspiracy conviction. Johnson served the majority of that sen...
- Aaron Randle
- 11 min
Sep 29, 2020 · Most people think of Alcatraz as a relic of past times, a chapter in a long-closed history of crime in America, but there are former inmates of Alcatraz who are still alive today.
The United States Department of Justice acquired the United States Disciplinary Barracks, Pacific Branch, on Alcatraz on October 12, 1933. The island became adapted and used as a prison of the Federal Bureau of Prisons in August 1934 after the buildings were modernized and security increased.
By the late 1850s, the first military prisoners were being housed on the island. While the defensive necessity of Alcatraz diminished over time (the island never fired its guns in battle), its role as a prison would continue for more than 100 years.
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Oct 27, 2009 · The federal prison on Alcatraz Island in the chilly waters of California’s San Francisco Bay housed some of America’s most difficult and dangerous felons during its years of operation from ...
