Alcatraz (73 page)

The recidivism numbers are most surprising for the subgroup of inmates on which this book focuses—those imprisoned at Alcatraz during the gangster era. Dividing the sample population into three separate groups, or cohorts, based on the ten-year period during which the inmate was sent to Alcatraz, allows the fates of the gangster-era inmates to come into focus. A clear majority of the inmates in the first-decade cohort—more than 63 percent—managed to stay out of prison after they were released, making them by far the most successful of the three cohorts (see table, above).
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Their success rate almost exactly matched the rate of 63 percent that we calculated for inmates who had served their time at Leavenworth, a standard federal penitentiary during the same period Alcatraz was in operation.
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The men in the first-decade cohort were those who lived under the conditions described in the preceding chapters, during James Johnston’s tenure as warden and before the prison population and the regime changed substantially after World War II. Included in this cohort were the men whose years on the Rock were served while the silent system was in place, the dungeons were used, no payment was given for work,
and fewer privileges and harsher restrictions on outside contacts were allowed than in subsequent decades. In short, Alcatraz convicts as a whole succeeded well beyond expectations, and those who succeeded at the highest rate after release were those who spent time at Alcatraz when the conditions of confinement were most punitive.

The study’s findings deserve a closer look, to address questions that readers may have formed in their minds. Since arrest records reflect only officially reported criminal law violations, did some former Alcatraz inmates from the first-decade cohort commit major prison-worthy crimes after release for which they were never arrested? This is possible, but highly unlikely. Ex-convicts in the first group were under the supervision of parole agents who expected them to get into trouble and watched them closely. Further, it was standard practice for BOP officials to notify local police and FBI offices when a former “public enemy” or local bank robber returned to town. (Several interviewees reported that they were picked up by local police who wanted to obtain an up-to-date “mug shot,” or because they were regarded as obvious suspects for a robbery that had occurred in the vicinity.) It is therefore reasonable to assume that because of their outstanding criminal and prison records, this particular group of ex-cons received a higher level of attention from parole and law enforcement officers than men who had done time only in standard penitentiaries. The sensitivity to their actions, and the initial low level of expectations for success by their parole officers, if anything, put these men at greater risk than most ex-prisoners of violating the terms of parole and conditional release and being returned to prison.

Another possible objection is that measuring success and failure based on whether a releasee stayed out of prison does not adequately reflect the degree to which he is reintegrated into the community as a productive citizen. For example, how successful was he in finding and keeping a job? What was the quality of the relationships he established with family members, wife, or live-in partner? Did he abuse drugs or alcohol? What was the state of his physical health and psychological well-being?
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Of course, the answers to these questions vary—and these types of data were in fact collected for many former inmates in the sample. But for the purpose of establishing a quantifiable, broad-brush measure of success, staying out of prison is the fundamental outcome for a population of incorrigible convicts. As far as law enforcement agencies and the officials at the Bureau of Prisons were concerned, the overriding question related to the postrelease adjustment of these men was not whether they found
work, got married, or felt discouraged or were content with their lives after release, but whether they committed new felonies.

How did the gangster-era inmates manage to succeed at a rate so far beyond anyone’s expectations? What explained the ability of so many of them to return to the free world as law-abiding citizens? How much of their high rate of success was attributable to their unique characteristics as an inmate population and how much to the conditions of their imprisonment? These important questions, all with policy implications, are not easy to answer. Many factors influence success or failure after release, from the circumstances and personalities of individual prisoners to the penal environment in which they lived.

To form answers to these questions, it is necessary to start with the inmates themselves. Sorting out all the possible influences on the postre-lease behavior of this group of lawbreakers, to determine which were most important and most predictive of success or failure, requires going beyond the statistics for the population as a whole and learning about each inmate’s life before, during, and after imprisonment on a case-by-case basis. It means gaining an understanding of how each man understood the factors that shaped his behaviors, decisions, and outcome.

As noted in the preface, these data were obtained by conducting interviews with more than fifty former Alcatraz inmates. Armed with the knowledge that a surprising number of gangster-era inmates had returned successfully to civil society, we oriented our questions toward the experience of confinement on America’s Devil’s Island and adjustment to life in the free world.

The interviews made it clear that the kinds of causal factors that inmates ascribed to their fates after release—personal resolve to change, support from a wife, old or new, or from family members, and lucky breaks such as an understanding employer or parole officer—often had little to do with the time spent at Alcatraz. Once the influences of personality and individual circumstances were understood, they could be separated from the social factors—most notably, the conditions of confinement at Alcatraz—that applied to all inmates during the years 1934 to 1948.

Because they provide some insight, descriptions of the postrelease lives of fourteen Alcatraz convicts are profiled below. Half of these case studies are based on interview information. All utilize prison and parole record information. Divided into “successes” and “failures,” they lead toward generalizations about resources and factors that helped determine postrelease success for this group. These generalizations provide a foundation
for
chapter 14
’s discussion of the findings related to the effects of confinement on Alcatraz.

Ten former gangster-era inmates make up the list of successful releasees profiled below. They do not represent all of the inmates in this category. Several of the Alcatraz convicts mentioned in earlier chapters who can be considered successful because they did not return to prison are not included. They include Joe Urbaytis, who remained in the free world for several years, arrest-free, before meeting a violent death; Al Capone, who lived his last years under close FBI surveillance and never returned to the rackets he helped establish; and Roy Gardner, who several years after his release took his own life. Many of the men profiled here were released during the second or third decades of Alcatraz’s operation, but as convicts who served time during the gangster years, they typify the “public enemies” of the time who were deemed beyond reform.

When Harvey Bailey arrived at Alcatraz on September 4, 1934, and looked around the mess hall, he saw some old friends. There were Tom Holden and Francis Keating, his golfing partners, and George Kelly and Albert Bates, against whom he bore no ill will, although Kelly often expressed frustration that Bailey was not doing more to fight the bum rap he received in the Urschel case. Bailey was philosophical about his situation, according to E. E. Kirkpatrick, Urschel’s brother-in-law, who had been the intermediary between the kidnappers and the Urschel family:

I sat beside Bailey during the Urschel kidnapping trial in the Federal Court Room in Oklahoma City and I became quite interested in him. He was immaculately dressed, a handsome fellow, and his conduct was conspicuously gentlemanly as compared to the other defendants—“Machine Gun” Kelly, Bates and others. Harvey and I talked quite a lot during the trial and his sense of humor was good. I asked him if he wasn’t going to offer any testimony in defense of his case and he said, “Hell Kirk, I have a thousand years coming already, a 100 more won’t make any difference.”
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Bailey spent twelve largely uneventful years at Alcatraz. His only misconduct report came in September 1937 as a result of his participation in a work strike. When Deputy Warden E. J. Miller asked him why he
refused to work, Bailey replied “that he had a long time to stay in prison and that he had to get along with the rest of the prisoners. Said that he realized he was not going to get anything, but he had to go in with the others for this was his home for the rest of his life.”
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After two days in isolation, Bailey agreed to return to his work assignment. During his years on the Rock he worked in the prison carpenter shop, received no visits from his wife, who had became involved with another man and filed for divorce in 1947. He was well liked by the staff and respected by other inmates for his quiet, dignified manner—and his outstanding career as a bank robber, plus his escape from the Kansas state prison. On September 9, 1946, after twelve years at Alcatraz, Bailey was transferred back to Leavenworth. There he accumulated several minor misconducts, the most serious being “rattling the bars of his cell” and shouting at an inmate nearby who was snoring loudly and keeping Bailey from sleeping.

In April 1953 Kirkpatrick sent a letter to Warden C. H. Looney requesting permission to visit Bailey at Leavenworth. Efforts to obtain a parole for Bailey began in January 1956 when James Bennett wrote to Warden Looney suggesting transferring Bailey to the Kansas State Penitentiary at Lansing so he could serve his federal and state sentences concurrently. But, the Kansas Parole Board replied, since it was asking the governor to recommend a commutation of Bailey’s sentence, he should stay at Leavenworth in the event it was granted, which would make it unnecessary for him to return to Lansing.

Meanwhile Kirkpatrick was allowed to visit Bailey in October 1957, ostensibly to help establish a parole plan for him. But Kirkpatrick really wanted Bailey to help him write a book about Bailey’s career. This proposal was rejected by James Bennett, who noted,

It’s too risky a business. . . . We couldn’t permit him to grant Mr. Kirkpatrick endless interviews to write the story of his life without an exception in his case to our general rules about permitting magazine writers, reporters, and free lance people to interview a prisoner while in our custody.
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After the sentences of Kathryn Kelly and her mother, Ora Shannon, were set aside, Bailey filed an affidavit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma claiming that his constitutional rights had been violated during his trial for the Urschel kidnapping: his lawyer had not been given enough time to prepare his defense, he had not had an opportunity to confer privately with his counsel, and his lawyer was being investigated and interrogated at the same time by agents of the FBI. (Bailey’s
attorney was, in fact, indicted for receiving some of the ransom money as payment for his services and was sent to prison himself.) Bailey also contended that the constant popping of flash bulbs and the clicking of newsreel cameras distracted from the orderly course of the trial, that machine guns were stationed at every entrance of the courtroom, and that he was brought into the courtroom in handcuffs and leg irons.
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This appeal was unsuccessful.

In July 1958 Kirkpatrick wrote a letter to the U.S. Board of Parole advising that he had talked with the FBI agents who arrested Bailey in the Urschel case, Edgar Vaught, the presiding judge at the trial, and Charles Urschel, who all agreed to recommend parole for Bailey.
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Despite this promise of support, Bailey formally withdrew his application from the parole board in September:

Much has appeared in the public press as to the likelihood of a parole in my case. This is to inform you that a hearing on my part will be unnecessary, as I will reject parole. Therefore limiting my case from your considerations for the reasons set forth in the following—I am not guilty of this offense. I had nothing to do with the kidnapping. I was merely an innocent person at the scene. I was a victim of hysteria and prejudice. The man who was kidnapped was a wealthy man and wielded great influence in the state of Oklahoma and elsewhere. He has boasted that he will spend $1 million to keep everyone in prison. By accepting parole, I would be admitting guilt and my future activities would be restricted. In view of all this I wish to advise you that I will reject parole and ask that you no longer consider my case.
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Over his fourteen years at Leavenworth Bailey continued quietly doing time, minding his own business, working in a furniture factory for eleven years and then in the industrial maintenance shops. During the 1950s his son visited him, but these visits fell off in the late 1950s. Although his son lived nearby in Kansas City, for reasons not indicated in prison records Bailey advised him not to write to him because “it might be detrimental to his [son’s] welfare.” Bailey did receive “occasional visits from a niece and a brother.”
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In March 1960 Bailey was transferred to the Federal Correctional Institution at Seagoville, Texas; a few months after his arrival he wrote to Warden John C. Taylor at Leavenworth thanking him for facilitating his transfer:

The relaxation and beautiful surroundings of this place has opened new horizons of thinking for me, which I did not think existed. . . . Last night
I sat in the comfortable visiting room, at a Personality Development Group and participated in the discussions. Then, we listen to a very good speaker, who illustrated his talk with colored slides. This group is sponsored by the Dallas Human Relations Group—a nationally known organization. After the meeting, we strolled out to the Compound under a full moon and shining stars. Can you imagine what this means to a man who has been locked up at night in D-Block at Alcatraz?
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