# "U.S. Penitentiary Alcatraz: Federal Prison 1934-1963" (National Park Service, Alcatraz Island)

Canonical: https://mobfiles.org/items/nps-us-penitentiary-alcatraz/

National Park Service summary of the penitentiary years: the product of Attorney General Homer Cummings and Bureau Director Sanford Bates, with James A. Johnston as warden for fourteen years and a "concentration model" that later served as a blueprint for the high-security prison at Marion, Illinois.

The page says the penitentiary "represents the federal government's response to post-Prohibition, post-Depression America," a response produced by Attorney General Homer Cummings and Sanford Bates, Director of the Bureau of Prisons, and "a high-profile prison that represented the Justice Department's response to fears around public safety and organized crime." Officials sought a remote site that would "prohibit constant communication with the outside world"; land in Alaska was considered before the availability of Alcatraz Island "conveniently coincided" with the perceived need.

It says James A. Johnston, a businessman and prison administrator with twelve years in the California Department of Corrections, served as warden for fourteen years. It classes the prison as a "concentration model," in which difficult-to-manage prisoners from other institutions were concentrated under one roof, an experiment, and says the model that Johnston and the second Director, James V. Bennett, developed "would later serve as a blueprint for the high security federal prison located in Marion, Illinois." The page gives no opening date for Marion.

## Sources

- National Park Service, Alcatraz Island (Golden Gate National Recreation Area): https://www.nps.gov/alca/learn/historyculture/us-penitentiary-alcatraz.htm