ABSTRACT
Alcatraz has the distinction of being the most famous prison in the United States and having the best location in the San Francisco Bay, with a spectacular view of the San Francisco skyline of any prison in America. It was the first super-maximum custody prison built here and was based on the theory that isolating the most dangerous and disruptive prisoners and putting them in maximum security prisons would make running ordinary prisons easier. As David A. Ward and Thomas G. Werlich explain in their essay 'Alcatraz and Marion: Evaluating Super-Maximum Custody': One of the reasons Alcatraz was so famous was that it housed some of America's most dangerous and most celebrated criminals. It was opened on August 1934 and closed down on March 21, 1963, and nobody escaped from it. Now Alcatraz has become a very popular tourist destination, with more than a million people a year visiting the island on either day or evening tours.
