President Donald Trump wants to convert Alcatraz Back in a federal prison, decades after the transformation of the fortress of the island of California into an American tourist destination because it had become too expensive to house the worst American criminals.
The prison off the coast of San Francisco is the place where the government has sent notorious gangsters Al Capone and George “Machine Gun” Kelly as well as less known men who were considered too dangerous to lock themselves elsewhere.
Surrounded by herons and gulls and often wrapped in fog, Alcatraz was the frame of films featuring Sean Connery, Nicolas Cage and Clint Eastwood.
Trump says that Alcatraz, who is now part of the National Park Service, is suddenly necessary to accommodate the “most ruthless and violent” criminals in America.
“When we were a more serious nation, in past times, we did not hesitate to lock up the most dangerous criminals and to keep them away from anyone who could harm. This is how it is supposed to be,” said Trump on his social site of truth on Sunday.
Alcatraz is in the bay of San Francisco off the coast of San Francisco and visible from the Golden Gate Bridge. He is best known for his years as a federal prison, from 1934 to 1963, but his history is much longer.
President Millard Fillmore in 1850 declared the island for public purposes, according to the Park Service, and he quickly became a military site. The Confederates were hosted there during the civil war.
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In the 1930s, the government decided that it needed a place to hold the worst criminals, and Alcatraz became the choice of a prison.
“A distant site has been sought, which prohibits constant communication with the outside world by those confined within its walls,” said the Park service. “Although land in Alaska is envisaged, the availability of Alcatraz Island has conveniently coincided with the perceived need of the government of a high security prison.”
The remoteness finally made him impractical. Everything, fuel food, had to arrive by boat.
“The island had no freshwater source,” according to the American prisons office, “therefore nearly a million gallons of water had to be burned on the island every week.”
The cost to host someone there in 1959 was $ 10.10 per day, compared to $ 3 in a federal prison in Atlanta, the government said. It was cheaper to build a new prison from zero.
Why is Alcatraz notorious?
Despite the location, many prisoners tried to go out: 36 men tried 14 distinct escapes in the bay, according to the FBI. Almost all were captured or did not survive in cold water and fast.
“Escape d’Alcatraz”, a 1979 film with Eastwood, told the story of John Anglin, his brother Clarence and Frank Morris, who all escaped in 1962, leaving behind plaster heads made by hand with real hair in their beds to deceive the guards.
“During the 17 years we worked on the case, no credible evidence appeared to suggest that men were still alive, in the United States or abroad,” said the FBI.
“The Rock”, a 1996 fictitious thriller with Connery and Cage, focuses on an effort to save the hostages of the Rogue Marines on Alcatraz.
Alcatraz was part of the Golden Gate National Leisure Zone and was opened to the public in 1973, a decade after its closure as a prison.
The fleet service indicates that the island obtains more than a million visitors per year who arrive by ferry. A ticket for an adult costs $ 47.95 and visitors can see the cells where prisoners were held.
Rob Frank, 55, from Springfield, Missouri, said that he had shot Alcatraz about ten years ago. He said it was difficult to imagine the millions of dollars that would be necessary to reopen the prison.
“It didn’t seem very human to me,” said Frank. “They had the cells stacked on each other. The small cells. Everything is concrete. It was a bit of a dark place.”
In 1969, a group of Amerindians, mainly students, said it had a historic right in Alcatraz and began an occupation which lasted 19 months until the intervention of the federal authorities in 1971.
“The underlying objectives of the Indians on Alcatraz were to awaken the American public to the reality of the fate of the first Americans and to affirm the need for Indian self-determination,” wrote the late historian Troy Johnson.
& Copy 2025 the Canadian press