Inside the Walls of Alcatraz, by Frank Heaney - SIGNED

Inside the Walls of Alcatraz, by Frank Heaney. 1987 softcover. 127 pages, very nice condition. SIGNED.

Inside the Walls reveals much of the real life on the barren outpost of Alcatraz prison in San Francisco Bay, as seen by Frank Heaney, the youngest guard ever to work there. He presents a fine history of this penitentiary constructed in the 1930s to deal with the gangsters of the time. Here readers will find the stories of the “celebrity gangsters” – Al Capone, Machine Gun Kelly, and, of course, Robert Stroud, “The Birdman of Alcatraz – as well as an authoritative description of the inner workings of the compound.

One of the big pluses of this volume is Heaney’s personal account of working as a guard intertwined with the experiences of the prisoners. Thus, we learn of his first day on the job contrasted with what a new inmate finds on his first day. He recounts his daily duties and responsibilities as he recounts the prisoners’ daily schedule: the time outdoors, the meals, the privileges and the punishments. Heaney suggests that the “real terror of Alcatraz” was the boredom and isolation for the prisoners. He also details the occasional escape attempts, the stuff of best-selling books and films. Finally, Heaney explains, briefly, the closing of Alcatraz due to operating expenses and a shift in the public’s attitude toward prison – away from severe surroundings for punishment to more rehabilitation. At least that was the thinking in the mid-1960s.