Word: alcatraz
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BIRDMAN OF ALCATRAZ (334 pp.)-Thomas E. Gaddis-Random House...
...that proud and querulous Robert Stroud often got prison bureaucrats sorely annoyed at him by insisting on his right to carry on scientific work in his cell. In 1942, exasperated officials put a halt to his researches: they sent him, in handcuffs and leg irons, from Leavenworth to tougher Alcatraz. He is there now, aged 65, still in solitary confinement. He has spent more time in solitary-39 years-than any other federal prisoner in U.S. history...
Birdman of Alcatraz crackles with Author Gaddis' anger at those who helped Robert Stroud set that record. But the book's great merit is that, rather than pity and indignation, it stirs admiration for a fantastic human achievement...
...certain points of your Dec. 6 story on ... William Remington . . . The murder of Remington can be ascribed solely to the misadministration of the various correctional institutions and penitentiaries under the U.S. Bureau of Prisons. Beatings, sluggings and murder are the order of the day in Danbury, Lewisburg, Atlanta, Chillicothe, Alcatraz, and wherever the prison system has an establishment. These crimes are hush-hushed . . . J. Parnell Thomas came closer to describing accurately the situation [in LIFE, Oct. 4] than anyone I know. It is a well-known axiom in prison that "nobody gives a damn about us" ... It is high time...
Died. James A. (for Aloysius) Johnston, 79, longtime (1934-48) warden of Alcatraz prison; of a liver infection; in San Francisco. Scholarly Penologist Johnston tamed riotous San Quentin during his 1913-25 tenure, had to abandon "reconstructive" penology when he took over in 1934 as first warden of Alcatraz, which had been deliberately established as a fortress to hold the meanest mobsters in gangdom (Al Capone, "Machine Gun" Kelly...