According to Ancestry.com, one in eight Americans has a felon in their family tree. If you’re curious whether any of your ancestors did time for a crime, Ancestry.com has posted a collection of nearly 75,000 records of prisoners from the nation’s most infamous U.S. penitentiaries, including McNeil Island, Alcatraz and Leavenworth, among others. The prison record collection spans 1875 to 1963 and even includes photo ID cards of nearly 3,500 inmates who did time in McNeil Island. If your ancestor served time at one of these institutions, they could easily have rubbed elbows with some of America’s well-known criminals also found in the collection, including Al Capone and Robert Stroud, known as “The Birdman of Alcatraz.” This collection also reveals other notable facts about our nation’s criminal past, including:
· Louisiana, Texas, Georgia, Mississippi and Oklahoma top the list of “worst-behaved” states. The “best-behaved” states include Maine, Minnesota, North Dakota, Rhode Island and New Hampshire.
· Some of the most common offenses perpetrated by the inmates included bank and postal robbery, which were most common in maximum-security facilities. Mail fraud, IRS law violations and counterfeiting topped offenses of those in medium-security facilities.
· From the late 1870s through the mid 1900s, if you committed a felony your chances of going to the slammer were about 1 in 10, surprisingly comparable to today.
· The average length of sentence that an inmate served was nearly 2 1/2 years.
