Joseph Bowers Joseph Bowers Joseph "Dutch" Bowers (December 13, 1896 – April 27, 1936) was the first man to attempt an escape from Alcatraz prison. On 27 April 1936, convict Henry Larry claims to have watched Bowers, who was feeding seagulls, stack some empty barrels and climb up next to the fence so he could retrieve a bit of food which had fallen on the barbed wire. He stood there feeding the birds for several minutes until a tower guard turned, saw him atop the fence, and fired on the convict. Bowers fell seventy feet to his death on the rocks below.
No Escape: Male Rape in U.S. Prisons by HRW staff, interns and other individuals. The study began in 1996, when announcements were published in "Prison Legal News" and "Prison Life Magazine", both widely circulated within U.S. prisons. Soon after, the report's primary author, Mariner, received thousands of letters from inmates, many detailing rapes. The book-length "No Escape: Male Rape in U.S. Prisons" was released on April 19, 2001. The report documented that prison rape was commonplace during a time when half of U.S. states compiled no statistics on the subject. Brent Staples described the report, which was based partly on the testimony of over 200 inmate victims,