Alcatraz to re-open

It was only a matter of time before someone tried to make Alcatraz trendy again. Of course, leave it to Donald Trump to decide that what America really needs in 2025 is a good old-fashioned maximum-security prison on an island surrounded by freezing shark-infested waters. Because if there’s anything that screams modern justice reform, it’s reviving the one place in the United States that managed to become more infamous for its failure to rehabilitate than for its inmates.

So there it is, splashed across the BBC and picked up by every news outlet with a taste for drama: Trump wants Alcatraz reopened. Not as a museum. Not as a film set. Not as the overpriced ghost tour it’s become. No, he wants it back in business. A functioning, fortress-style penitentiary ready to house the worst of the worst. Presumably with cameras rolling.

The irony? It’s a logistical and legal migraine. The island’s a protected national historic landmark now, which means you can’t just pop a new lock on the front door and start tossing in inmates. But then, this is Trump we’re talking about. The man who turned a golden escalator ride into a political movement probably doesn’t see historical preservation as much of a speed bump.

Let’s rewind, though. Alcatraz wasn’t always the Instagrammable ruin it is today. Before the tourist boats and school groups with packed lunches, it was one of the most dreaded places a convict could end up. No one got sent to Alcatraz for pinching a handbag or having an off day on their taxes. This was where the federal government stashed its worst nightmares — the escape artists, the gangsters who still managed to run empires from behind bars, the ones who couldn’t be broken anywhere else.

In its heyday from 1934 to 1963, Alcatraz stood as the ultimate deterrent. Not because it was particularly brutal (though that depended on who you asked), but because it was final. You got sent to Alcatraz when the justice system wanted to make an example of you. Think Al Capone, George “Machine Gun” Kelly, and Robert Stroud, better known as the Birdman of Alcatraz, despite the inconvenient fact that he didn’t keep birds on the island.

The place wasn’t built for comfort. Cells were the size of broom cupboards. The wind off the bay made winter feel like punishment. The food was famously decent, but only because riots tend to be inconvenient when you’re running a prison in the middle of the sea. And yet it wasn’t the cold or the isolation that made it legendary — it was the myth of escape.

Alcatraz marketed itself as inescapable, a fortress so tightly locked that even thinking about breaking out was a fool’s errand. That didn’t stop people from trying. Thirty-six inmates attempted escapes in total, with varying levels of creativity and desperation. Most were caught, some shot, a few drowned. But then there was the 1962 escape — the one that still gives conspiracy theorists heart palpitations.

Frank Morris and the Anglin brothers pulled off what might be the most stylish prison break in American history. Armed with spoons, papier-mâché, and audacity, they tunneled out through the back of their cells, climbed up a service corridor, and slipped into the night on a raft made of raincoats. No one ever found their bodies. Officially, they drowned. Unofficially, they’re probably still sipping cocktails somewhere, laughing at how they turned a foggy rock in San Francisco Bay into legend.

By 1963, the prison had become too expensive to maintain. The salt air corroded everything. Plumbing went on strike. The buildings needed more TLC than a Victorian orphanage. The government shrugged and shut it down. And thus, the great island of punishment became a dusty relic.

Then came the tourists. If you’ve ever queued up for the Alcatraz ferry in San Francisco, you know the vibe. People get weirdly excited about looking at where Capone sat on a toilet. The audio tour — narrated by ex-guards and inmates, no less — has become something of a cult classic. Families with toddlers toddle past solitary confinement, pausing for selfies next to what was once the loneliest cell block in America. If ghosts could roll their eyes, the ones on Alcatraz would never stop.

In 1969, long before it was chic to reclaim abandoned spaces, Native American activists occupied the island to protest broken treaties and the US government’s abysmal record on Indigenous rights. They stayed for 19 months, drawing attention to their cause and planting a flag of resistance that still echoes in civil rights circles. But even that powerful chapter often gets buried under the kitsch and drama of the prison years.

So why, after all that, would anyone want to reanimate this gothic monument to punishment? Well, because Trump. Reopening Alcatraz ticks all the boxes: tough-on-crime rhetoric, nostalgia for a time when punishment didn’t ask questions, and the media frenzy that comes with any move involving his name. It’s performative politics dressed as policy. Like proposing a moat full of alligators along the border, but wetter.

There are whispers that this new iteration wouldn’t be your standard lock-up. Maybe it’s for high-risk terrorists. Maybe it’s a supermax with a reality TV budget. Maybe it’s just a concept to throw at the wall and see who tweets about it. Whatever it is, it’s theatre, and like all good theatre, it runs on audience attention.

Legal experts have already started grumbling. You can’t just reverse-engineer a national park into a prison. Environmental impact reports, historical preservation statutes, and public opposition aren’t just footnotes. But since when has bureaucracy ever stopped a Trump-sized spectacle? He thrives on the impossible. He calls it disruption. Others might call it chaos with better hair.

And then there’s the broader question: what message does it send to bring back a place like Alcatraz? Is it a serious answer to serious crime? Or a historical reboot nobody asked for? There’s a romanticism to Alcatraz, if you squint hard enough — a cinematic quality, full of black-and-white photographs, foghorns, and hardened men staring through bars. But romanticism doesn’t house inmates. And nostalgia doesn’t fix a justice system already creaking under its own weight.

Still, you have to admire the audacity. In a country where prisons are either privatised or overcrowded or both, Alcatraz looms like a fantasy. An escape-proof island. A symbol of strength. A name you don’t forget. Maybe that’s the appeal. Not the practicality, not the policy. Just the name.

Alcatraz.

Say it out loud. It has gravitas. It sounds like a film title, or a threat. It evokes something final, uncompromising, dramatic. Exactly the kind of set piece that fits neatly into the theatre of modern politics. Especially politics shaped like a late-night talk show crossed with a courtroom drama.

In the end, maybe nothing comes of it. Maybe Alcatraz remains the photogenic ruin it’s been for decades, while Trump moves on to proposing floating detention centres in the Gulf of Mexico or laser fences in Montana. But the fact that we’re even talking about it says a lot. It says we’re in an age where history, policy, and drama collide like ships in a fog.

Alcatraz was always more than a prison. It was a stage, a warning, a myth. And like all good myths, it refuses to stay buried.

So if you happen to be sailing around San Francisco and see a construction crew unloading barbed wire and a film crew setting up dolly tracks, don’t be surprised. The show might be about to start again. Curtains up. Spotlights on. The Rock is calling.

BBC story: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cze17n02gego