264 - Alcatraz: Prison Escapes, Infamous Inmates, and More

Timesuck with Dan Cummins

Dan Cummins

True Crime, Society & Culture, Religion, Conspiracies, History, Biographies, Education, Adult Humor, Comedy, Dark Humor, Conspiracy, Cults

4.7 • 21.6K Ratings

🗓️ 4 October 2021

⏱️ 157 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week, we lay out the history of escape attempts, infamous inmates, what daily life was like and more on Alcatraz, America's most infamous prison.

Transcript

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0:00.0	What do you do with the prisoner who just doesn't care about following prison rules?
0:03.6	A prisoner who refuses to show respect for the warden or the guards or other inmates,
0:08.2	someone who keeps running criminal activities from the inside, someone who won't stop trying to
0:12.7	escape, someone who attacks and or kills other inmates and guards? What if your prison doesn't
0:18.2	have the room to always keep a prisoner like that isolated? What if even an isolation they still
0:23.6	cause problems? From August of 1934 to March of 1963, what America did with those prisoners was
0:30.2	send them to Alcatraz. For just under three decades, the rock, as it was commonly known,
0:35.0	was the end of the line for especially unruly and or dangerous inmates and for escape risks.
0:40.7	Also known as America's Devil Island, Alcatraz was designed to break your spirit,
0:44.8	to make you think there was zero chance that you could escape, to make you believe that if you
0:48.9	didn't conform, that if you didn't behave, that if you didn't fall in line and do exactly what was
0:53.2	being asked of you by prison officials, your life was going to be utterly miserable. There was no
0:58.4	tolerance for trouble makers on the rock. Alcatraz was best known for taking America's most notorious
1:03.6	trouble makers, men like Mafia boss Al Capone and infamous bank robber and kidnapper George
1:08.9	machine gun Kelly, the first public enemy number one and turning them into just another inmate,
1:14.2	just another number. On Alcatraz, these men would learn there would be no chance of them ever
1:18.5	running the joint, getting preferential treatment or of them ever having their underworld associates
1:23.4	help break them out. They would follow the warden's rules or they would be punished period.
1:28.7	The rock had the reputation of being a cold impenetrable concrete fortress. Small island in the
1:34.0	middle of the San Francisco Bay initially served as the first lighthouse of the American West,
1:38.6	then as a military fortification, then as a military prison followed by a maximum security
1:43.5	federal prison until it was closed in 1963. And now it's a park or people like me can get a tour
	...

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