The tension in Alcatraz heats up in 1937 as the guards and prisoners clash. Escapes will be made, prisoners and guards will be killed. Al Capone spends his final years on the island. And another con's reputation finally catches up to him in a shocking act. Alcatraz is beginning to live up to it's reputation as the toughest prison in America.
- Problem Wards with Tin Cups – A Death on the Island - “Who's a Son of a Bitch?” - Milk Sugar and Eggs – Feeding Seagulls – Spanish Dungeons - Barbershop Sheers - “A caged animal turns mean. If you taunt it deliberately, it becomes dangerous” - Alvin Karpis There weren't many ways off Alcatraz, especially in the short term. No prisoners were ever paroled out of the prison, the thought was: if you're bad enough to be on Alcatraz, what business do you have being set loose on the public. Serving out a sentence was usually a long term prospect given the gravity of many of the inmates records. Being stuck on Alcatraz was enough to drive a man crazy. Dreams of flight would inevitably cross a prisoner's mind. The options were limited: get a medical transfer, serve your time, die or escape. With the additional pressures of the guards, the rule-of-silence, the threats of being locked away in a dungeon dramatically increased the thoughts of getting off the island. Over the course of Alcatraz's time as a Federal Prison 28 prisoners would be transferred by boats in body body bags to the morgue in San Francisco. The records kept, the guards, and those who survived sentences on Alcatraz would tell their tales.
As dusk settled on the era of prohibition, the United States was in the midst of a crime wave that spread across the nation. Would be bootleggers turned their attention to other vice trades including holdups, bank robberies and kidnappings. The introduction of powerful getaway cars and high capacity Thompson submachine guns allowed criminals to outrun and outgun the law. FDR's New Deal program created public works projects with the hope they would help move the nation out of the Great Depression that hit the economy in 1929. A part of this program would be to focus on stopping cross-state crimes that were the calling card of the modern gangster and bank robbers. Laws were created for this purpose and their enforcement would be left to a small, then unknown agency, that would eventually become the Federal Bureau of Investigations. As the Federal Prison population swelled and the prisoner's names became more infamous, there was a clear need for a place to house the worst of the worst from across the nation. The opening of Alcatraz Federal Prison signified a major change in the way the U.S. Government handled mobsters and outlaws. The reign of gangsters bootlegging, running brothels, speakeasies, protection rackets, gambling wires and cold blooded gangland killings were coming to an end. Most of the criminals would not survive being hunted by the law, but many of those that did would find themselves in the state-of-the-art prison: Alcatraz.