The Justice Department had taken over the old Army disciplinary barracks on Alcatraz in October 1933 and spent months refitting it with tool-proof bars, metal detectors and new radio equipment. On August 11, 1934, the first batch of 137 inmates arrived from the U.S. Penitentiary at Leavenworth, having travelled by rail to Santa Venetia, California. Fourteen men from McNeil Island joined them. The prison was built for inmates other federal prisons could not control.
Attorney General Homer Cummings and Sanford Bates, the first director of the Bureau of Prisons, wanted a prison that would hold the country's most dangerous and escape-prone convicts and deter everyone else. The cold currents of San Francisco Bay made the island a natural fortress, and the press soon called it "Uncle Sam's Devil's Island".
New arrivals spent their first three months in quarantine and could receive no visitors for at least 90 days. Incoming letters were checked by staff for hidden messages, and privileges such as work, the library and time in the recreation yard had to be earned. Eleven days after the Leavenworth group, 43 more prisoners arrived from Atlanta, and by the prison's first anniversary it held 242 men.
Over 29 years it held some of the best-known criminals in America. The Bureau of Prisons maintained that no prisoner ever escaped successfully, and high running costs and crumbling structures led to its closure on March 21, 1963.
Key people: Homer Cummings, Sanford Bates, James A. Johnston