by David Ward
THE SPANISH DUNGEONS
Alcatraz’s reputation for harsh punishment was well established before the Bureau of Prisons took custody of the island from the War Department. A report by the post surgeon in 1893 noted the use of dungeon cells, “in one of the old howitzer casemates . . . these cells were so far away from the ventilation openings as to be ‘simply villainous.’ The cells in the dungeon were only about one quarter the size of the regular cells . . . they must have been more like coffins.” From 1907 to 1912, when the old prison was demolished and the cell house that the Department of Justice inherited in 1934 was constructed, the basement of the citadel was “preserved under the prison and used as punishment cells.” During the period the island served as an army prison, the harshness of confinement was noted in news stories.19
In January 1934 James Johnston and Loring Mills, the administrative manager, inspected the basement of the cell house and found two sets of four alcoves with bars across the front of each alcove. Mills recalled, “Mr. Johnston and I went down there before we opened the institution and we decided that it should never be used. It was below ground, it was dark and musty and damp, but they must have used it for disciplinary reasons.” (We can only speculate whether the omission of an updated disciplinary segregation unit in the remodeling of the prison reflected Director Bates’s strong opposition to the common use of solitary confinement as a punitive measure.)20
It is difficult to understand why James Johnston, who had managed two high-security penitentiaries—San Quentin and Folsom—did not anticipate the need for a separate disciplinary segregation unit and some solitary confinement cells, particularly since Johnston was well aware that he was charged with housing the federal prison system’s most serious and accomplished escape artists and troublemakers. Confounding this operational problem was the warden’s decision to confine protest leaders and other rule breakers in the two old military cell blocks that had not been renovated by the Bureau and thus lacked tool-proof steel bars for cell fronts or for windows in the outer walls. It led to precisely the kind of publicity Sanford Bates and his successor, James V. Bennett, wanted to avoid—evidence that the prison was not “escape-proof.”
This deficiency became apparent with the first organized protest. Under a regime in which the rule of silence was to prevail, the problem for the warden and his staff was what to do with protesters who had been separated from the general population by locking them up in the old military-era cells in A and D blocks, where they continued to yell to each other and to prisoners in other cell blocks. As noted earlier only the hastily constructed solitary cells in A and D blocks provided some means of containing sounds of protest. Yet the task of dragging a resisting prisoner to the isolation cells on the third tier of A block, up several flights of the circular iron stairway with railings and bars the prisoner could grab, proved difficult and dangerous for both officers and inmates.
In October 1934 Deputy Warden C. J. Shuttleworth and other custodial administrators began placing the most obstreperous protesters in the alcove cells in the basement below the main cell house. Located in the outer walls of the foundation under A and D blocks, these cells were accessed through stairways located in the floors of these units.
The basement area extended from one side of the cell house to the other. Guards sometimes exploited this arrangement by taking a prisoner down the stairs from one block to one of the alcove cells, and days or weeks later bringing him back up to a first-floor cell in the block on the opposite side of the cell house.
Officer Robert Baker described the cells and their use:
When we took over in 1934 there were dungeons underneath the floor. A certain type of men are afraid of the dark. We had a big steel plate that covered the steps in the old Spanish dungeon. We’d take them down those steps in A block and put them in these cells with a bucket and turn the light off. Then we’d take them underneath [the cell house] and bring them up into the old D block and put them in cells over there. So when the prisoners saw them go down in A block they thought “they’re down in the dungeon.” Maybe they wouldn’t see them for three or four weeks—all the time they were in D block. The cells under D block were also used. But the guys over in A didn’t see them come out so they figured “Geez, they must have died or been swept out to sea.” When [prisoners] were in there they got bread and water, the first six months we handcuffed them—there was a lot that went on down there.21
Constructed with brick walls, ceiling, and floor, the dungeon cells were fronted by a set of bars with a grill door in the middle that was secured by a chain and padlock. They contained no toilet, no running water, no light fixture, no mattress or furnishing of any kind. When they were first used, some prisoners were handcuffed in a standing position to the crossbars in the front of the cell. The only light, when it was turned on, came from a dim bulb in the ceiling of the hallway in front of each set of alcoves. The prisoners were dependent on guards to allow them to take their waste buckets to be emptied in a hallway toilet. During 1934 and early 1935 the only sustenance was bread and water, but by 1936 regulations called for a meal to be provided every third day—at the discretion of guards and custodial officials. No exercise outside the cell was allowed, no reading materials were permitted, and once the hall light was turned off and steel doors over the stairways leading back to the main floor of the cell house were closed, sounds of protest could not be heard by the prisoners in the cell house.22
The first man to be sent down to what was variously cited in prison records as “basement solitary” and “lower solitary” was Leo McIntosh whose low number, 74, indicates that he was one of the first federal prisoners on the island. McIntosh was serving a relatively short sentence of five years for auto theft. He earned a trip to Alcatraz based on his escape from a Florida prison where he was serving a life sentence for murder and escapes twice more from chain gangs. Sent to Atlanta for transporting a stolen vehicle across state lines during his latest escape, he annoyed the staff by filing numerous complaints and thus was placed on the first train that took Atlanta convicts to Alcatraz. McIntosh arrived on August 8, 1934, and one month later, September 8, after his refusal to stop talking in the cell house, he was placed in D block isolation, where he continued yelling to other prisoners. He was then removed to a lower solitary cell under D block where he remained for nineteen days. McIntosh kept a record of his time by scratching a line for each day on the wall of the cell. His was not only the first but also the longest stay in lower solitary by any Alcatraz prisoner.23
On October 1, 1934, John Stadig was sent to lower solitary for two days as punishment for circulating a petition among the prisoners. On December 3, a group of prisoners were taken down to dungeon cells. One of them, Charlie Berta, was cited for “sending out defamatory comments, agitating and promoting trouble, making slanderous remarks about guards and hollering at officers on the wall.” Berta described his experience in a lower solitary cell under D block:
You came in at A block and you came out by D block. There was no beds, you slept on the bricks, but it was warm. I had a jumpsuit. You didn’t need nothing. You got bread and water, but there was no running water. You had a shit bucket but after a couple of days you had no bowel movement because you didn’t take nothing in. The light was a not very strong light in the hall; no guards were stationed down there. When they’d come down you’d know it—there was a slight draft—you could feel it—and you knew somebody was coming down. They tried to sneak in on you. I was handcuffed to the door in daytime during working hours. You couldn’t sit down or lay down. If you had to go to the bathroom, you just went. The dungeon was better than the cells in A block where all they done was pour some concrete over the bars because you’d get the fluctuation of the weather but in the dungeon the temperature was always the same.24
In the basement Berta had the company of several other prisoners. John Messamore was confined from December 2 to 14, 1934, for “writing a letter . . . inferring an escape plot.” Clyde Hicks’s brief
stay, from December 3 to 4, 1934, came as a consequence of being caught conveying a note from one prisoner to another while working as a cell house orderly. After eleven days, Berta was brought back up to an A block isolation cell where he spent another nine days before he was returned to the general population.
Maurice Ordway, who started work as a guard in October 1934 and during his many years on the island was promoted to lieutenant, described the process by which a prisoner ended up in the basement:
When we first opened up we used lower solitary—we never called it the dungeon. I’ll tell you exactly how it worked. You’d have these characters raising hell—this would always happen at night—and Captain Miller would come in the cell house and sit down at his desk and say, “Bring that clown down here.” A couple of officers would get the guy out of his cell and Miller would ask him, “What’s going on?” And of course the guy would be cussing him out, so he’d say, “throw him downstairs.” Nine times out of ten that guy never walked down those stairs; that guy would slide down those stairs and hit that steel door—then you’d open the door and lock him up.25
George Boatman, who also rose to the rank of lieutenant during his career at Alcatraz, remembered Berta’s confinement in the dungeon.
The dungeons were a kind of a cell. We had to put a padlock and chain [around the bars of the gate] to lock the door. They weren’t very good security . . . there wasn’t a thing inside—just a pail. When I first went there they handcuffed Charlie Berta to the bars . . . they had to stand up all day that way. The [solitary] cells on the third tier of A block had a toilet and washbasin in them. The [dungeon] cells had absolutely nothing. They were like the strip cell now in D block except they didn’t even have a hole in the floor. They had a bucket [for a toilet in lower solitary]. You had to feed them a square meal every third day—bread and water was their regular ration. The doctor had to visit them . . . you had to call him if a prisoner said he was sick. It was dark down there. Unless the officer went down there you turned the lights out. You let the inmate out to empty his [slop] bucket and get some water. They had no mattress [compared to solitary cells in A block]. . . . [Bureau of Prisons’ assistant director] Bixby was quite unhappy [about the use of the dungeons] because we had Charlie Berta chained up to the door when he came out. Washington didn’t like the use of them. I suppose Johnston authorized it but [deputy warden] Shuttleworth gave the orders to put the strike leaders down in the dungeon.26
Boatman was right—BOP headquarters was concerned when word reached Washington, D.C., that several prisoners had been chained up. On a trip to McNeil Island Penitentiary in July 1931 after Director Bates found a prisoner standing with his arms attached to an iron ring, he wrote to the warden expressing his displeasure:
I don’t know whether it was understood at the time I left your institution but this letter will confirm my understanding that the iron ring formerly used to secure men undergoing punishment in standing position is to be removed. Please advise me when this is done.27
Thus when Bates’s representative reported that during an inspection of Alcatraz he “found two or three men in the ‘dungeons’ . . . in chains,” the director immediately informed Warden Johnston:
The use of chains in this manner is specifically and definitely disapproved. We have provided Alcatraz with every practicable scientific device to make it secure, and I cannot bring myself to believe that it is necessary to resort to the antiquated practice of chaining men.
I think it is very undesirable for us to use the old dungeons as punishment cells. If you feel that we have not provided sufficient or suitable isolation facilities, please submit at once estimates on the cost of remodeling cells in the unused portions of the building in such a way as to adapt them to fulfill the need which you are now meeting by use of the dungeons.28
Prison records and staff and inmate testimony provide evidence that handcuffing inmates in a standing position ceased after this order from headquarters but the use of the dungeon cells continued. Johnston told Bates that he agreed that use of the dungeons was “undesirable” and that two solitary cells separated from each other had been constructed in D block (by extending the fronts of regular cells with concrete walls and ceiling) “to give us a two-door instead of a one-door entrance.”29
Bates’s concern that his order might not be carried out was reflected in a follow-up letter to Johnston, asking for “your assurance that these cells will not be used except in rare cases; that when they are used a special report will be sent to this Bureau; and also that the use of the shackles has been discontinued.”30
Understanding that these forms of punishment could lead to allegations of physical as well as psychological abuse, about two weeks later Bates asked Johnston for further assurance that
there is no stringing up by the wrists or otherwise; they are using the old cells in the basement only as a last resort; that our most severe means of punishment is solitary confinement for short periods, meaning from three to 10 days; and that under the regular rules of the Prison Bureau, a doctor representing the United States Public Health Service visits twice a day all men in solitary and no reports of insanity resulting from disciplinary measures have been received . . . in your letter of April 3, you stated, “we are not using shackles in connection with confinement or punishment.” Does the word “shackles” include leg irons, handcuffs and chains of all kinds? Do you make a careful discrimination in your punishments between those who have consciously and deliberately disobeyed the rules and those who have any suspicion of a mental aberration? We cannot afford to have it said that we are punishing men who are insane or mentally disturbed.31
These exchanges between the director, far away in Washington, D.C., and James Johnston reflect in very civil language the tension between Bureau headquarters trying to avoid negative publicity related to a very controversial penitentiary and a warden used to having almost complete autonomy in running a prison placed in his charge.
The most serious punishment that could be imposed upon an Alcatraz inmate was the removal of some or all of his good time. Most of the men on the Rock were quite accustomed to doing time in isolation or disciplinary segregation units, but the loss of months or years of good time substantially lengthened the actual time served. It also generally foreclosed the possibility of transfer from Alcatraz and thus weighed heavily against any consideration for parole. Through normal disciplinary proceedings, an inmate could lose days or weeks of the good time he had already accumulated, and he could lose months or years of accumulated good time—as well as good time yet to be earned—through a pseudo-due-process procedure carried out by a “good time forfeiture board” usually comprised of the deputy warden and the captain or a lieutenant. Such boards were constituted when an inmate committed a serious violation of prison rules, such as attempted escape or assault.
At these hearings, an inmate was not allowed to call other inmates as witnesses; he was not given advance notice of the charges lodged against him; and no appeals were permitted. Since inmates were asked insultingly, “Can you tell your own story or do you need someone to help you?” none asked for help. A verbatim transcript of the testimony was recorded, since the warden was required to submit a copy of good time forfeiture proceedings to the Bureau of Prisons’ central office in Washington, D.C.
No decision at Alcatraz regarding loss of good time—which in some cases amounted to as much as ten years—was ever overruled by Bureau headquarters. Throughout the prison’s thirty-year history, no inmate was ever given the right to a review of the reasons for his transfer to the island, officially informed of the reason(s) for denial of his request for a transfer from the island, or provided with the reasons for losing privileges or for being placed in disciplinary segregation or solitary confinement or for losing months or years of good time. Alcatraz convicts never had a law library; no lawyers from the civil rights division of the Justice Department, the American Civil Liberties Union, or any prisoner’s legal aid group ever visited the island; a
nd no congressional committee or federal judge ever ordered an inquiry into conditions for prisoners on the Rock.
INTERNAL CONTROL VS. EXTERNAL IMAGE
The restrictive regime at Alcatraz was intended to establish and maintain control of the prisoners. In this sense every rule, prohibition, and policy was a practical (though not necessarily effective) solution to the problem of managing a population of inmates defined by their unmanageability at other prisons. But there was also another reason for the tight controls on prison life—to project an image of severe punishment to deter criminal wrongdoing by the general public as well as to discourage escape and misconduct by federal inmates. This rationale, less apparent on the surface, was important to the Department of Justice and the Bureau of Prisons.
The dual nature of the regime at Alcatraz helps explain the changes that occurred in prison rules and policies over time. When the prison was designed, it was hoped that the program at Alcatraz would simultaneously serve the purposes of internal control and external deterrence. But it soon became apparent to prison administrators that the practical concerns of running the prison were not always well served by rules rooted in the need to project a harsh image. The silent system is a good example of a rule that helped create an appropriately harsh image of punishment but was almost impossible to enforce and thus did not contribute to inmate management.
The competing purposes of the control systems in place at Alcatraz also help explain the divergence and conflict that arose between Warden Johnston and the Bureau of Prisons headquarters around issues related to prison rules and practices. Johnston naturally made practical considerations of control a priority. When he felt that effective management required practices not in line with Bureau guidelines—for example, his use of the dungeons during the prison’s first years—he was not afraid to put them into effect. The punishment that occurred in lower solitary was explicitly forbidden by Bureau headquarters, but for almost four years Warden Johnston insisted that it was absolutely necessary to have the dungeon cells available to deal with the most disruptive rule breakers.32 Several cases in which confinement in dungeon cells involved handcuffing prisoners in a standing position to the bars in front of the cells were as close as Alcatraz got to physical punishment of prisoners.