Model Industries Building: Prisoners at Work

The north end of Alcatraz Island and the Model Industries building, circa 1930

The army built the Model Industries Building in 1922 to retrain imprisoned soldiers at the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks. The structure contained a blacksmith shop, plumbing shop, a vocational training school, other workshops, and a band practice room. While some continued to break rocks under heavy guard, others engaged in tending the gardens on the Rock's barren landscape, a form of horticultural therapy.

What types of work do you think are appropriate or maybe not appropriate for those incarcerated? Why?

Rising costs led the Army to turn Alcatraz Island over to the Federal Bureau of Prisons in 1933. The Disciplinary Barracks became a maximum-security prison for disruptive men transferred from other federal prisons. This isolated rock in cold, windy San Francisco Bay seemed an ideal place to lock up men like Al Capone, a notorious gangster transferred from U.S.P. Atlanta, or Joseph Bowers, a petty criminal with mental health issues who could not adjust to life at U.S.P. Leavenworth. Some men were required to work, others had to earn the privilege.