Stroud had received permission from the warden at Alcatraz to write a penal history, but bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., balked when they reviewed his manuscript. The top brass hastily created new rules for inmate authors, forbidding the publication of any inmate's work that was obscene, criticized the prison system, or glorified crime. Stroud was transferred in 1959 to the US Federal Medical Prison for chronically ill inmates in Springfield, Missouri, where he died in November, 1963. Martin, the Missouri attorney, was named administrator of Stroud's estate and gained custody of the...
Stroud had received permission from the warden at Alcatraz to write a penal history, but bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., balked when they reviewed hi...