ABSTRACT
Before the twentieth century, the federal government had briefly operated the Walnut Street Jail in Philadelphia and had run a prison in Washington, DC, for a short time. In 1891, Congress passed the Three Prisons Act, stipulating that federal prisons should be built in the Southeast, in the Northeast and west of the Rocky Mountains. In its early years, the federal prisons hosted a number of notable inmates. Karl Panzram, who committed at least 20 murders and who sodomized over 1,000 men, was incarcerated at Leavenworth. Around 1918, 97 members of a labor union called the International Workers of the World were sent to Leavenworth for violating the Espionage and Sedition Act, which prohibited citizens from speaking out against the war. In 1933, ownership of the 12-acre Alcatraz Island military prison was transferred to the US Department of Justice to be used as a federal prison.
