Devil's Island: Prison During The Great Depression

Devil’s Island

On November 30th, 1933, in Seattle, Washington, Mr. Pyle turned on the gas and cut one of his wrists. A few minutes later his wife smelled the gas and found her husband who police said was “despondent over financial troubles,” and brought him to the hospital. The Great Depression influenced many crimes and suicides that were necessary for most people to commit due to their financial deprivation. Financial stress being the number one cause for this violence, made it very hard for many families to succeed during the 1920s. If you disobeyed the rules of society, they sent you to prison. If you disobeyed the rules of the prison, they would send you to Alcatraz. Alcatraz has been a popular social topic because of the mystery that

During the Great Depression, crime was targeted as grave problem, and while many criminals found imprisonment and punishment, most found opportunity and even success. Prohibition and the Great Depression changed the United States’ strategic needs. Organized crime turned government attention away from outside threats, toward the need to contain highly dangerous criminals within the United States. In 1933, Alcatraz Island was turned over to the Department of Justice to serve as a new kind of prison. Alcatraz’s and McNeil Islands main accomplishments weren’t putting away the most dangerous criminals and keeping America safe. The convicts housed in Alcatraz were not necessarily those who had committed the most violent or heinous crimes, but they were the convicts most in need of an attitude adjustment. They had bribed guards and attempted escapes, and a trip to Alcatraz was intended to get them to follow the rules so that they could return to other federal facilities. McNeil Island also housed some of Alcatraz’s most notorious criminals, including Robert Stroud “Birdman”, Alvin “Creepy” Karpis, Al Capone, and Roy Gardner. Furthermore, McNeil had its own cast of noteworthy characters, one being Mickey Cohen “Gangster Mick”, the boss of the

One of the most well known members of the mafia, Al Capone, was sentenced to the Alcatraz prison in San Francisco in 1934. Because Al Capone was most famous for being a brutal mafia member, most Americans had thought that the mafia would soon subside. However, the mafia did not operate over one person. Mafia gang members did not need Al Capone to strive during the era. Many people believe that the crime rates increased during the Great Depression. James V. Bennett, the director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, states that institutions like Alcatraz were necessary to control the security issues of gangster era criminals. According to Donna Raaphorst, author of Alcatraz- the History of an Island Prison, Raaphorst states, “Bennett and Homer Cummings agreed Alcatraz would alleviate the stress in the rest of the system. Confining the escape artists and the real troublemakers on the Island would result in less regimentation and a freer atmosphere in the other prisons and in American societies” (139). Bennett also claims that existing federal prisons were overcrowded due to the