On one of our days in San Francisco, Shawn and I went to Alcatraz. I thought it might be a bit boring to simply walk through a deserted prison and look at a bunch of look-alike cells, but it ended up being awesome! As you walk through the prison, you do a self-guided audio tour that was really informative and interesting. Here we are pulling up to "The Rock."
At the end of this entry, I put a link to a video with most of the accompanying audio tour. It's about 15 minutes long, but really interesting. For those of you who don't wanna watch the video, I will put some notes throughout the entry.
The cells
Here's on of the jail cells
As we learned during the tour, inmates could decide to do good time or bad time...The inmates who behaved well, were given some nice privileges, like spending time outside, or being able to take out books from the library. If an inmate was really bad, he could be sent to Isolation.
Isolation was just a small black room. More like a large box really. The inmates would spend 23 hours/day in there, with no light. One guy on the tour audio, said he would entertain himself by taking a button of his shirt, throwing it on the ground and trying to find it in the dark. Once he found it, he would do it all over again.One of the attempted escapes. For more detail, you can watch the youtube audio tour video
A bunch of marks from the gun shots
Some personalized cells. Apparently, one of the inmates knew how to crochet and he taught other inmates, so this became a favorite passtime of many...as you can in the bottom left corner of the picture below...
Visiting rules
The life of a correctional officer
Some views from the prison. San Francisco is only a couple miles away, so everyday, the inmates could look out and see what they were missing. How close they were to freedom, but how impossible it was to get to it.
Another attempted escape
The inmates made dummy heads to fool the guards and enlarged the vent openings in the back of their cells. They then climbed up the pies to the roof. The guards discovered this on their morning rounds.
The men were never found.
After 3 decades, 1500 men had served time at Alcatraz. By then, the harsh winds and weather had deteriorated thed building to the point that it was too expensive to run and maintain, and was shut down.
To hear some of this in the voices of the guards and inmates, check out some of the actual audio tour and video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XLoMqydKN4
-Alcatraz, San Francisco, CA
Very interesting video and well worth the fifteen minutes! It made me sad to see that originally, prisoners could only have visits from their loved ones ONE day each month and no physical contact. It must have been so hard not to be able to give or get a hug from your family. That alone would make me think twice before committing a crime!
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