All famous prisons have special features, stories of dramatic riots, exciting escapes, and heartrending stories lurking behind their dark walls. Alcatraz, perched dramatically on a rock in San Francisco Bay was supposedly "escape-proof" and yet several deadly prisoners broke free. New York's Sing Sing Correctional Facility became notorious for the 614 men and women executed in the electric chair. The English prison, Dartmoor, had menacing mists and swirling fogs, which made escape from this prison a terrible risk; while the peach-colored San Quentin, set on California's golden shores, contrasts with the darkness of its Death Row and the violence of its inmates. Mountjoy Prison figures prominently in Ireland's troubled past and its literature. The massive circular buildings of Stateville Penitentiary provide the best example of the once-revolutionary panopticon prison design.
