President Donald Trump has called to reopen Alcatraz, one of the most famous federal prison in U.S. history and which held some of America’s most notorious offenders from 1934 to 1963. Alcatraz has been in retirement for more than 60 years now after being too expensive to operate.
Alcatraz is currently built out of concrete, and this isn’t working.The concrete is very broken down as a result of the salt in the water surrounding the building. In order to run Alcatraz as a prison building again, it would need to be mostly rebuilt out of a different, and stronger material. This doesn’t include the modernization that will also need to happen, making this extremely expensive.
“The San Francisco Bay caused major deterioration on almost all the concrete exterior elements and by 2010 it was clear the building needed some restoration,” according to Sika USA. “With exposed corroding of reinforced steel on the walls, beams, columns and floor slabs. The most severe damage was on the exterior walls but there was also exposed rebar coming to the surface at cracks and spalls in the interior of the building.”
Alcatraz was shut down because it was too expensive to maintain. It would be even more expensive now accounting for inflation.
According to Newsweek, media personality Brian Krassenstein, who had toured the facility as of recently, had told NewsWeek that it was “the dumbest proposal” he’s ever heard, citing lack of structural stability and costly logistics. “Everything, water, food, fuel, must be barged in, and raw sewage barged out,” he wrote, estimating annual costs at $70 million to $75 million—three times of a comparable prison on the mainland,” Brian continued.
Not only is the annual number big, so is the daily one. On average, it was found that it cost $10.10 per prisoner per day in Alcatraz. For reference, the average prison costs $3 per prisoner. This means Alcatraz was, not including anything other than the prisoners’ containment, triple the expense of a regular prison.
America has a lot of prisons that we don’t end up filling up all the way or barely end up using. Such as The Louisiana State Penitentiary, one of the largest correctional facilities in the United States by inmate population. The conditions and labor practices are somewhat similar to Alcatraz. The prison is a maximum-security facility, and while it is not underutilized in terms of capacity, it is often criticized for its problematic conditions and history of human rights abuses.
One of Trump’s biggest reasons for the reopening is its security. “Nobody’s ever escaped from Alcatraz,” Trump said in the Oval Office recently.
However, this statement is just false regarding the fact that Frank Morris, John Anglin, and Clarence Anglin, are believed to have escaped on June 11, 1962. They successfully used a homemade raft to escape through holes in their cell walls, a ventilation duct, and onto the roof. Still, the FBI has never confirmed that they were successful, but their bodies were never found.
The reasoning behind Trump’s idea just does not seem ethical considering the facts backing up his reasons for the re-opening. This would cost far too much money for the intended usage. A high security prison on American soil is a good idea but Alcatraz is unreasonable and unethical.