Truesee's Daily Wonder

Alcatraz: Life on the rock

The former prison on Alcatraz may appear benign from afar, says Tim Jepson, but in the flesh it is a chilling memorial to darker times.

Tim Jepson
11:12AM BST 19 Oct 2009

Previous1 of 3 ImagesNext Alcatraz had been a lighthouse, fort and military prison before it became a federal penitentiary in 1934 Photo: GETTY Alcatraz was designed as the first 'super-prison' where rapists, murderers and vicious or extreme prisoners could be kept under one roof Photo: GETTY

The first surprise is how close it is to San Francisco Photo: GETTY

San Francisco is a tremendous city, and largely free of tacky tourist attractions, but I was certain one of its big draws – Alcatraz – would be unable to resist going down the Disney route, peddling a sanitised, Hollywood version of both prison and prison life.

The more so, as the island is reached from San Francisco's redeveloped waterfront, the Embarcadero, a long string of numbered piers, many still gritty, working wharves, others – such as Pier 39 – one of the city's few tourist ghettos: all souvenirs and fast-food outlets. But I was wrong. A visit to Alcatraz is a revelation.

Things start predictably enough. You board a gaudy boat full of chattering, camera-wielding companions, and chug towards "The Rock", as Alcatraz was known. The first surprise is how close it is – just a mile and a half from shore – the second, how pretty it looks; a pivotal feature of the matchless San Francisco Bay, perfectly framed by the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance.

From the boat, the illusion that this might have been a rather pleasant place to do time persists – what views back to the city and across the water, and what a pastoral-looking little island.

Step ashore, however, and you are quickly disabused. The place is battered, creepy, moribund, gloomy, depressing, dusty, drab, grey, seedy. But its appearance is by design, the work of the National Parks Service, sensitive custodians of the site who have avoided any sanitisation or sentimentalising of the past or place.

Little, in fact, has been done, other than basic maintenance, since Robert Kennedy, then the Attorney General, ordered the prison's closure in 1963, partly because it was so expensive to run – $10 per prisoner per day, as opposed to $3 elsewhere in the federal prison system – and partly because the bay was being horribly polluted by the sewage from the island's 250 prisoners and the 60 Bureau of Prisons guards and their families.

From the jetty, we join a guided tour and walk past crumbling guardhouses and other buildings, all peeling paint and pitted stone, to the main block and canteen, a forbidding space for which the word institutional might have been coined. Chatter in the group is now rather more subdued.

Alcatraz had been a lighthouse, fort and military prison before it became a federal penitentiary in 1934, designed as the first "super-prison" where rapists, murderers and recidivist, predatory and otherwise dangerous, vicious or extreme prisoners could be kept under one roof. Segregation on such a scale had never before been attempted. Al Capone was the most famous inmate, brought here from Atlanta, where he had been able to continue his rackets from his cell by buying off guards. No such joy at Alcatraz.

No joy of any sort, I imagine as we walk to the main cell block, made up of the most basic cells: rectangles, with no doors, just bars – cages, really – in long lines, with identical levels above. No windows. The tiny size is the most striking thing – seven or eight feet by five; that, and what must have been an extraordinary lack of privacy.

Unless, that is, you were in solitary, as many invariably were, notably Robert Stroud, the famous "Birdman of Alcatraz", who spent six of his 17 years on the Rock in solitary (and a total of 42 years in solitary during his 54 years of incarceration here and elsewhere). The cells in solitary are even smaller, and even more depressing – which is saying something.

Back out into welcome sunlight, my gaze turns to the beautiful view of San Francisco and, inevitably, to escape (most questions to our guide relate to escape, followed by queries on riots and violent death). The city looks so close. Surely it's an easy swim? You'd think so, until you look at the ominous churning currents in the straits. Thirty-six prisoners tried to escape in 14 attempts: 23 were caught, six were shot and killed; two drowned; and five were never found, presumed lost at sea.

The Parks Service background to Alcatraz suggests prisons are often a reflection of the time in which they are created, and that Alcatraz represents the US government's response to post-Prohibition and Depression-era America, born of necessity, and tailored to, and shaped by, a dour and violent decade.

True or not, it is a testament to the Parks Service's studied neglect of Alcatraz that this tiny fossil, in one of the world's most beautiful modern cities, continues to cast the chill, sombre