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Food, clothing, shelter, and medical care
- At Alcatraz, a prisoner had four rights: food, clothing, shelter, and medical care. Everything else was a privilege that had to be earned. Some privileges a prisoner could earn included: working, corresponding with and having visits from family members, access to the prison library, and recreational activities such as painting and music.
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At Alcatraz, a prisoner had four rights: food, clothing, shelter, and medical care. Everything else was a privilege that had to be earned. Some privileges a prisoner could earn included: working, corresponding with and having visits from family members, access to the prison library, and recreational activities such as painting and music.
Badly behaved prisoners were liable to having their yard access rights taken away from them on weekends. The prisoners of Alcatraz were permitted to play games such as baseball, softball and other sports at these times and intellectual games such as chess.
- 312
- August 11, 1934; 89 years ago
- March 21, 1963; 60 years ago
In 1933 the U.S. Army transferred control of the prison to the civilian Department of Justice, and, from 1934 to 1963, Alcatraz served as a federal prison for some of the most dangerous convicts in the American penitentiary system.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
- 3 min
- Early Years as a Military Prison. In 1775, Spanish explorer Juan Manuel de Ayala (1745-97) mapped and named rugged Alcatraz Island, christening it La Isla de los Alcatraces, or Island of the Pelicans, due to its large population of sea birds.
- Doing Time as a Federal Prison: 1934-63. In 1933, the Army relinquished Alcatraz to the U.S. Justice Department, which wanted a federal prison that could house a criminal population too difficult or dangerous to be handled by other U.S. penitentiaries.
- Famous Inmates. Among those who did time at The Rock was the notorious Prohibition-era gangster Al “Scarface” Capone, who spent four-and-a-half years there during the 1930s.
- Escape Attempts from Alcatraz. Over the years, there were 14 known attempts to escape from Alcatraz, involving 36 inmates. The Federal Bureau of Prisons reports that of these would-be escapees, 23 were captured, six were shot and killed during their attempted getaways, two drowned and five went missing and were presumed drowned.
Nov 12, 2020 · Soon after he was transferred off the island, the penitentiary on Alcatraz was closed. It was never desegregated during its years of operation. In California, prisons weren’t desegregated until after the 2005 US Supreme Court decision that declared it unconstitutional to segregate people inside of a prison.
Aug 12, 2019 · Prisoners were given four rights. They included medical attention, shelter, food, and clothing. Recreational activities and family visits had to be earned through hard work.
Apr 5, 2024 · Date: June 11, 1962. Location: Alcatraz Island. United States. Alcatraz escape of June 1962, jailbreak from the supposedly escape-proof maximum-security federal penitentiary on Alcatraz Island, California, on the night of June 11, 1962.
