Prez Trump on social media states he has ordered federal officials to “REBUILD, AND OPEN ALCATRAZ!”
The post claims that “in times past, we did not hesitate to lock up the most dangerous criminals, and keep them far away from anyone they could harm.” But this recent Sentencing Project report details that “[o]ne in six people in U.S. prisons is serving a life sentence (16% of the prison population, or 194,803 people) — a proportion that has reached an all-time high even as crime rates are near record lows.” In addition, as this AP article notes, the “Bureau of Prisons currently has 16 penitentiaries performing the same high-security functions as Alcatraz, including its maximum security facility in Florence, Colorado, and the U.S. penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, which is home to the federal death chamber.” In addition, the post references “criminals who came into our Country illegally,” and so it is not even clear what kind of population of the “most ruthless and violent Offenders” that Prez Trump imagines in “a substantially enlarged and rebuilt ALCATRAZ.”
Subtantive issues aside, the logistics surrounding turning “The Rock” into a modern prison would not be easy or cheap. As the AP article explains:
[This] move would likely be an expensive and challenging proposition. The prison was closed in 1963 due to crumbling infrastructure and the high costs of repairing and supplying the island facility, because everything from fuel to food had to be brought by boat. Bringing the facility up to modern-day standards would require massive investments at a time when the Bureau of Prisons has been shuttering prisons for similar infrastructure issues….
A spokesperson for the Bureau of Prisons said in a statement that the agency “will comply with all Presidential Orders.” The spokesperson did not immediately answer questions from The Associated Press regarding the practicality and feasibility of reopening Alcatraz or the agency’s role in the future of the former prison given the National Park Service’s control of the island….
[T]he Bureau of Prisons is operating in a state of flux — with a recently installed new director and a redefined mission that includes taking in thousands of immigration detainees at some of its prisons and jails under an agreement with the Department of Homeland Security. The agency last year closed several facilities, in part to cut costs, but is also in the process of building a new prison in Kentucky.
Interestingly, this article suggests that local activists have gotten in the way of efforts to build a new federal prison in Kentucky. And the article includes interesting item about the Kentucky prison plan: ‘The last time [Donald] Trump was in office, he did speak out vocally against this project; he thought it was a wasteful allocation of funds,’ said Joan Steffen, an attorney at the Institute to End Mass Incarceration.” Perhaps Prez Trump will seek to use the $500 million that had been authorized for a Kentucky prison to his Alcatraz plan. But I would suspect that three or four times as much federal taxpayer money would be needed for a substantially enlarged and rebuilt Alcatraz.