What It Was Actually Like To Be A Prison Guard At Alcatraz Prison

As former prison guard George DeVincenzi gave Reuters a tour around the prison on Alcatraz, he pointed out several spots where horrific incidents occurred. DeVincenzi noted the location of a slaying that resulted from a prison love triangle gone wrong. A different gory incident happened in the laundry room, while the guard had to remove a prisoner from solitary confinement after he covered himself in his own excrement.

Former Alcatraz resident Chuck Stucker lived on Alcatraz as a child. Though he did not outright state all the traumas his father had to face, he implied his father may have suffered psychologically from his time as a guard. Stucker said he was strictly told not to startle his dad. He said, "I was never allowed to surprise him... [I was told] 'Don’t jump out from a doorway, don’t surprise him. That was impressed upon me."

Guards often didn't talk about their day-to-day experiences, especially the more traumatic moments that marked their career at Alcatraz.

When guards were hired at Alcatraz, they moved to the island with their families. There was often pride in working at Alcatraz: Claire Rudolf Murphy, who lived on the island as a child, said of the job's prestige, "Fathers were quite proud of their work [as corrections officers] and the mothers would say that was a dang good job, especially during the depression."

Chris Stucker, who was only four months old when his father received a job at the federal prison on Alcatraz, compared the experience to living on a military base. Many of the families on the island were housed in Building 64 and formed a small community amongst themselves. For the children, their lives were normal.

Steve Mahoney who lived on Alcatraz until he was 6 said: 

We played baseball and flew kites and rode bikes on what had been the parade field... We’d get loaves of bread and feed them to small sharks. For us, it was a big playground.

Though Alcatraz was a maximum security prison and guard housing was barricaded from the prison ground, life on the island was not always safe. There was always the fear of a potential attempted prison break. Chris Stucker was a child on Alcatraz, but he was too young to remember or comprehend the fears on the island. According to Stucker, however, his older sister recalled hearing an escape siren go off once.

The family, along with the other residents, followed protocol by immediately locking themselves in their apartment and waiting for the danger to pass. In an attempted escape, officials feared an inmate may try to take hostages.

Prison riots or escapes were always a fear for the guards, and there were many precautionary designs built into the prison to prevent inmates from taking over the prison. There were incidents, however, when the defenses didn't work.

During May 2nd through 4th of 1946, there was a standoff at Alcatraz between guards and prisoners. Bernard Paul Coy, who was serving a 26-year sentence for robbery, covered his body in axle grease and climbed up to where side arms were stored. Equipped with a handmade bar spreader, he squeezed into the gallery and armed himself. 

Coy knocked out a prison guard and strangled him with his necktie. He distributed side arms to other inmates, and together they took nine guards hostage. Although the guards handed over most of their keys, they were able to conceal one that led to the recreation yard, keeping the fight contained inside the cell house. The Coast Guard and Marines were eventually deployed in response. 

After 48 hours of fighting, two guards and three prisoners perished in what became known as the Battle of Alcatraz.

There were twelve boats per day scheduled for Alcatraz's residents to voyage to the mainland. Former guard Jim Albright recalls everyone keeping a boat schedule on their person. People planned their schedules and trips to and from the island around the boats.

If you missed the last boat to Alcatraz from the mainland, you were stuck overnight. Albright said, "If you missed the last boat at night, shame on you, because you [would be] in town all night."

Former guard George H. Gregory wrote a book titled Alcatraz Screw: My Years as a Guard in America's Most Notorious Prison in which he discussed the process of roll call. Gregory said it was fairly lax, particularly compared to his time at the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth.

At Leavenworth, Gregory writes that you could have been fired "for standing roll call in less than a clean, pressed, and polished uniform." On Alcatraz, however, not much attention was given to the uniform; the procedure was primarily to make sure guards were fit for duty and healthy enough to take on their shift.