by J. J. Maloney

As American politicians embrace a continually tougher stance on crime -- demanding longer sentences and tougher conditions, in the belief that such measures will cure the problem of crime, we might want to reflect back on the toughest penal colony of all time, Devil's Island.

The average American convict takes a perverse pride in having served time in a maximum-security prison. To many men it is a rite of passage, just as having served in combat is a rite of passage for others.  Yet no American prison has ever been as tough as Devil's Island.

by Michael Esslinger

Alcatraz. The name alone said it all. It was meant to send a shudder down the spines of the nation's most incorrigible criminals, and it did from the day it opened in 1934. It stripped Al Capone of his power. It tamed "Machine Gun" Kelly into a model of decorum. It took the birds away from the Birdman of Alcatraz.

Alcatraz was the end of the line. It was the U.S. government's version of the "final solution" to combating the lawlessness that Prohibition spewed throughout the Roaring 20s and into the teeth of the Great Depression. The government needed a prison as tough and harsh as the high-profile criminals it was finally running to ground. In Alcatraz, with its damp coldness, austere isolation, rigid discipline and code of silence, it got what it wanted. By the time the government shut down the prison in 1963, "the Rock" had indisputably done its job.

by J. J. Maloney

On Sept. 22, l954, Donald DeLapp was a 19-year-old convict at the Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City serving a four-year sentence for armed robbery. He was in solitary confinement on the third floor of E Hall, a dreary old cellblock originally constructed in l889.

The convicts had been through a brutally hot summer - farmers in Missouri still talk of the "drought of '54". Rats and other vermin crawled around the solitary unit. An occasional snake crawled up through the piping and dropped into the shower.

The convicts slept on straw tick mattresses which, as they aged, exuded a fine, powdery dust that hung in the aching heat, causing convicts to lay motionless on their bunks to avoid stirring up more dust. The sweat dripping from their bodies caused rivulets of mud.

by J. J. Maloney

When I was sent to the Missouri State Penitentiary at Jefferson City, in February 1960, there were 2,500 men inside "the walls." The white convicts slept three to a cell (except for several hundred in the one-man cells). The blacks slept as many as eight to a cell.

Stabbings and killings, robberies and rapes were common. Dope was easier to get in prison than it was on the streets. There were men in prison who were said to make more money each year from dope and gambling than the warden was paid. There were captains on the guard force who owed their souls to certain convicts.

You never knew whom you might have trouble with. The reasons for murder and mayhem made little sense to anyone except the convicts. So hundreds of men either carried a knife or had one they could get to in an emergency.

You wonder if you have an enemy in the "population." If you have, he has the advantage: He got there first, he made friends, he knows the prison. He has a knife; you don't.

{Ed. Note: The average person doesn't give much thought to the subject of AIDS among prison inmates, but as the number of American convicts grows exponentially -- so does the problem of AIDS in prison.  Each year approximately 1,000 convicts die from AIDS.  Even more alarming is the fact that the number of female convicts testing positive for HIV has been growing at an alarming rate:  88% from 1991 through 1995, while the rate for male convicts rose only 28.1% during that same period.  The following Bureau of Justice Statistics report deals in depth with this topic.}

Bureau of Justice Statistics

Hiv in Prisons and Jails, 1995

By Laura Maruschak | BJS Statistician

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Highlights

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HIV-positive State and

Federal prison inmates

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Year | Number | Percent of population

by J.J. Maloney

When I got to work that evening, in 1967, the ward was empty except for old Tony, who hadn't spoken an intelligible word for 21 years.

Tony was lying in bed staring vacuously at the ceiling, the flesh of his face sagging in tired folds. I'd fallen into the habit of stopping to watch his chest, to see if he were still breathing. Tony was the type who might lay there dead for hours before anyone realized that he was dead.

I discretely checked Tony's bed to see if he had messed it. He had, so I helped him out of bed and helped him out of his obscenely-soiled gown. With my head spinning from the odor, I stripped the sheets and blanket, wiped the rubber-coated mattress and went off in search of clean linen.

When I returned, Tony was sitting exactly as I had left him, staring at the floor in profound dejection, ignoring me as I washed him. (I detested the chore, but, since no one else would do it, and since I spent more time around him than anyone else, I had, so to speak, selfish reasons for keeping him as clean as possible.)

by John Lee Brook

The Aryan Brotherhood:  The First Woe

January 16, 1967:  Nazi prison-gang associate Robert Holderman was stabbed and then battered to death by Black Guerilla Family gang members at San Quentin.

January 17, 1967:  1,800 black inmates and 1,000 white inmates clashed on the main yard at San Quentin over the death of Robert Holderman.  Prison guards broke up the brawl by firing shots into the mass.  Five inmates were wounded by the shots.  One inmate suffered severe head trauma from the beating he received from opposing gang members.  Two other inmates suffered non-fatal heart attacks.

August 27, 1967:  Nineteen-year-old Barry Byron Mills was arrested in Ventura, California and held for transfer to Sonoma County, where he had boosted a car.  Sonoma had issued an arrest warrant in his name for grand theft auto.