The other inmates of Alcatraz during these weeks lived with heightened security. Additional counts, additional inspections, reduced privileges: the administrative response to an embarrassing security failure typically involves increased restriction. The prisoners who had not escaped, whose confinement was unchanged by the events of June 11-12, bore the increased supervision that the escape prompted.
The staff changes — guard reassignments, protocol reviews, security audits — that followed the escape are not fully documented in sources accessible for this article. What is documented is that the Bureau of Prisons conducted a formal review of the escape and that the institution continued operating for the remaining months of its federal life under heightened scrutiny.
The last prisoners were transferred on March 21, 1963. Twenty-seven inmates remained at that point, transferred to other federal facilities. The island went quiet. The cells that had held Capone and Machine Gun Kelly and the Birdman and Frank Morris stood empty. The dummy heads that had fooled the guards were secured as evidence.
The island’s transition from federal prison to National Historic Landmark was not rapid. It sat largely unused for years, occupied briefly by American Indian activists in 1969-1971 in a protest occupation that became one of the significant events of the Native American civil rights movement. It was eventually transferred to the National Park Service, which opened it to public tours and developed the historical interpretation infrastructure that makes it what it is today.
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## The Role of Allen West: Witness, Participant, Complicator
Allen West’s role in the documented history of the escape has three distinct phases: participant, witness, and ongoing complication.