visit at the same time. Inmates and their visitors were separated on either side of the cell-house wall. They looked at each other through a thick, bulletproof window and—until telephones were installed in 1939—talked through a perforated voice box that required them to speak loudly enough to be heard on the other side of the partition. Inmates sat at the windows on chairs on the cell-house side of the wall with guards standing next to them to assure that the conversation did not stray to discussions of other inmates, to any aspect of prison life, to criminal activities, or to topics regarded by guards as “immoral.”
Robert Baker was one of the guards who supervised visits. “When we started out it was six inches of concrete and three inches of glass between the inmate and his visitor. They had to talk to a little hole that was full of wire mesh like steel wool. You couldn’t put nothing through the wire, you couldn’t even blow cigarette smoke through it—there was no smoking anyway—but you couldn’t put nothing through this hole. The first three or four months they had no visits and then eventually they got one visit. After about five years, we got telephones and inmates could still look through this glass, it was about six by eight inches, and talk over the telephone.”
Warden Johnston’s first drafts of rules forwarded to BOP headquarters proposed that no attorneys be allowed to visit their clients at Alcatraz, because any lawyer representing an Alcatraz convict was suspected of being a tool of the underworld or an unscrupulous character intent on making trouble. This prohibition was overruled on constitutional grounds in Washington, D.C., but the process by which an attorney could gain permission to meet with his client was made as slow and cumbersome as possible: the attorney was required to obtain writtenpermission from the director of the Bureau of Prisons. In addition, verbal and written communications between inmates and their lawyers were not regarded as “privileged”; that condition, according to the Justice Department, pertained only to attorney-client communications before conviction. Prison administrators reserved the right to withhold any attorney-client correspondence if they deemed it was “being used for any social or business purpose or for any reason beyond legitimate and necessary legal communications.” 13
An inmate could order up to fifteen magazines from an approved list to be sent directly from the publisher, although all were screened by the mail censors for “objectionable articles.” 14 In addition to prohibiting newspapers and radio and limiting visits, the third means of communication between a prisoner and the outside world—writing and receiving letters—was also tightly controlled. The rules severely limited the numbers and the content of letters to be exchanged by prisoners and their families. On arrival, each inmate filled out a correspondents list that could contain the names of up to five members of his immediate family. Other federal prisons allowed seven to ten correspondents and included friends as well as relatives, but at Alcatraz the only exception to the rule limiting correspondence to family members was for prisoners who had no relatives; they could request permission to write to a friend. The legal status of correspondents and their eligibility was to be investigated by federal probation officers in the cities or hometowns of the proposed visitors or writers. If it was determined that the person had no criminal record and did not have an “unsavory” reputation as far as local authorities were concerned, the Alcatraz staff was notified and that name could be entered on the approved correspondents list. Once the mail censor received verification of the accuracy of the relationship of correspondents, the inmate was issued three sheets of paper on which he could write, with a pencil, on one side only. Only one letter per week could be sent out. Harrell
Robert Baker was one of the guards who supervised visits. “When we started out it was six inches of concrete and three inches of glass between the inmate and his visitor. They had to talk to a little hole that was full of wire mesh like steel wool. You couldn’t put nothing through the wire, you couldn’t even blow cigarette smoke through it—there was no smoking anyway—but you couldn’t put nothing through this hole. The first three or four months they had no visits and then eventually they got one visit. After about five years, we got telephones and inmates could still look through this glass, it was about six by eight inches, and talk over the telephone.”
Warden Johnston’s first drafts of rules forwarded to BOP headquarters proposed that no attorneys be allowed to visit their clients at Alcatraz, because any lawyer representing an Alcatraz convict was suspected of being a tool of the underworld or an unscrupulous character intent on making trouble. This prohibition was overruled on constitutional grounds in Washington, D.C., but the process by which an attorney could gain permission to meet with his client was made as slow and cumbersome as possible: the attorney was required to obtain writtenpermission from the director of the Bureau of Prisons. In addition, verbal and written communications between inmates and their lawyers were not regarded as “privileged”; that condition, according to the Justice Department, pertained only to attorney-client communications before conviction. Prison administrators reserved the right to withhold any attorney-client correspondence if they deemed it was “being used for any social or business purpose or for any reason beyond legitimate and necessary legal communications.” 13
An inmate could order up to fifteen magazines from an approved list to be sent directly from the publisher, although all were screened by the mail censors for “objectionable articles.” 14 In addition to prohibiting newspapers and radio and limiting visits, the third means of communication between a prisoner and the outside world—writing and receiving letters—was also tightly controlled. The rules severely limited the numbers and the content of letters to be exchanged by prisoners and their families. On arrival, each inmate filled out a correspondents list that could contain the names of up to five members of his immediate family. Other federal prisons allowed seven to ten correspondents and included friends as well as relatives, but at Alcatraz the only exception to the rule limiting correspondence to family members was for prisoners who had no relatives; they could request permission to write to a friend. The legal status of correspondents and their eligibility was to be investigated by federal probation officers in the cities or hometowns of the proposed visitors or writers. If it was determined that the person had no criminal record and did not have an “unsavory” reputation as far as local authorities were concerned, the Alcatraz staff was notified and that name could be entered on the approved correspondents list. Once the mail censor received verification of the accuracy of the relationship of correspondents, the inmate was issued three sheets of paper on which he could write, with a pencil, on one side only. Only one letter per week could be sent out. Harrell
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