Al Capone was sent to Alcatraz because the federal government’s first attempt at imprisoning him had failed. After his 1931 tax evasion conviction, he served two years at the U.S. Penitentiary in Atlanta, where he bribed guards, furnished his cell with luxuries, and kept running his Chicago criminal operation from behind bars. In August 1934 the Bureau of Prisons transferred him to the newly opened facility on Alcatraz Island, which had been designed to do exactly what Atlanta could not: sever an inmate’s contact with the outside world completely.
How Capone Ended Up in Federal Prison
By the late 1920s, Capone’s Chicago organization was pulling in an estimated $100 million a year from bootlegging, gambling, and prostitution, and the violence surrounding it had made him a federal priority. After the 1929 St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, President Herbert Hoover ordered Attorney General William Mitchell and Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon to coordinate a strategy to put Capone behind bars.1Herbert Hoover Presidential Library. Hoover’s Efforts to Jail Al Capone
The case that stuck was not about liquor. IRS agents built a tax evasion case on the theory, blessed by the Supreme Court in United States v. Sullivan, that income from illegal activity is still taxable.2Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. United States v. Sullivan, 274 U.S. 259 (1927) On October 18, 1931, a jury convicted Capone on three felony counts of willfully evading income tax and two misdemeanor counts of failing to file returns. Judge James Wilkerson sentenced him to eleven years in federal prison, a $50,000 fine, and $7,692 in court costs — at the time, the harshest tax sentence ever imposed.3FBI. Al Capone After his appeal failed, he was transferred to the U.S. Penitentiary in Atlanta on May 3, 1932.
What Went Wrong at Atlanta
The Atlanta assignment was supposed to be the end of Capone’s power. It wasn’t. He used his wealth to remake his cell into something closer to a hotel room, with expensive rugs, a radio, and fine furniture. Other prisoners saw him in silk pajamas, writing on high-quality stationery.
The comforts were the visible half. The functional half was worse. Prison staff allowed him frequent, loosely supervised contact with visitors and associates, and he turned his cell into a remote office, sending orders back to Chicago through couriers and lawyers. Guards who refused bribes were often intimidated into looking the other way. When federal officials learned that Capone was living better than some of the prison staff, the Department of Justice concluded that existing federal prisons simply lacked the infrastructure to hold an inmate with his financial and social leverage. The eleven-year sentence had not isolated him from the organization that made him dangerous. That was the problem Alcatraz was built to solve.
What Made Alcatraz Different
Attorney General Homer Cummings pushed for a new kind of federal institution built for inmates like Capone. The Department of Justice chose Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay, a former military fortress ringed by cold, powerful currents that formed a natural barrier to escape.4Department of Justice. Attorney General Homer Stille Cummings The conversion cost roughly $260,000 and took nearly a year. The facility opened in August 1934 and received its first federal prisoners on August 11.
Warden James A. Johnston ran the institution on what he called “rigid discipline and cold impartiality.” The rules were written to make the kind of corruption Capone had practiced in Atlanta structurally impossible. Inmates were guaranteed only four things: shelter, food, clothing, and medical care. Everything else had to be earned.
- No visitors were permitted during the first three months, and afterward inmates received at most one visit per month.
- Newspapers, magazines, and radios were prohibited.
- Inmates could not read their own mail. They received typed copies of incoming letters.
- Lawyers could be contacted only with written permission from the Attorney General.
- Thirteen official head counts were conducted every twenty-four hours.
The physical plant matched the rulebook. Remotely controlled locking mechanisms and electromagnetic metal detectors covered the key entry points, and the guard-to-inmate ratio was kept high. Alcatraz also did not take prisoners directly from the courts. Every inmate arrived by transfer from another federal institution, which meant everyone on the island had already proven too disruptive, too well-connected, or too dangerous for the regular system.
The Transfer
Capone’s move from Atlanta took place in August 1934 under tight security and deliberate secrecy. The Bureau of Prisons used heavily guarded train cars with bars welded over the windows, handcuffed inmates to their seats for the entire cross-country journey, and posted armed federal marshals on board. At every stop for water and fuel, agents with machine guns surrounded the train.5OpenSFHistory. Train to Alcatraz: A Closer Look
Fifty-three men left Atlanta amid heavy press coverage, and reporters staked out the Oakland railroad terminal expecting the train’s arrival. Prison authorities rerouted it south to the small railroad town of Tiburon instead, where the three-car train was rolled onto a barge and towed by tugboat directly to the island. The whole operation was engineered to prevent the kind of outside contact that had defined Capone’s time in Atlanta.
Did It Work?
Capone was registered as inmate No. 85 and discovered immediately that his reputation bought him nothing on the island. He made repeated appeals to Warden Johnston for special privileges, and Johnston denied every one. Visitation was capped at one 45-minute session per month, limited to immediate family, with no more than two visitors at a time.6Alcatraz History. Al Capone 85-AZ
His day followed the same rigid schedule as everyone else’s. Wake at 6:30 a.m., clean the cell, stand for count, march to the mess hall, twenty minutes to eat, then report to a work assignment. Capone spent much of his time sorting laundry in the prison basement. Final lockup came at 4:50 p.m., lights out at 9:30 p.m., and guards ran additional counts at midnight, 3:00 a.m., and 5:00 a.m.7Alcatraz History. Daily Activity Schedule
The other inmates did not treat him as a celebrity. A fight in the recreation yard cost him eight days in isolation. In June 1936, a bank robber named James C. Lucas stabbed him in the back with a pair of barber shears in a room next to the prison barber shop. The wound was not serious, and he was released from the prison hospital within days. Capone eventually acknowledged what the government had hoped for: “It looks like Alcatraz has got me licked.”
That admission was the point. The federal strategy was never only about serving a sentence. It was about breaking the connection between Capone and the organization he ran, and Alcatraz was purpose-built to do it. On January 7, 1939, after roughly four and a half years on the island, he was transferred out to the Federal Correctional Institution at Terminal Island in Southern California, then to Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, before his release from federal custody on November 16, 1939.8The Mob Museum. Chicago Crime Boss Al Capone Transferred to Alcatraz 90 Years Ago This Month He never returned to organized crime.