Donald Trump says he orders his government to reopen and develop Alcatraz, the former prison of sad prison on an island near the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.
On Sunday, in a message on his social site of truth, President Trump said that “for too long, America was plagued by vicious, violent and repeated criminal offenders”.
The reopening of Alcatraz-once notorious as one of the most difficult prisons in the United States-would serve as a “symbol of law, order and justice,” he said.
The main democrats said that the proposal was “not serious”. The maximum security installation, also known as rock, was closed in 1963 and is currently operating as a successful tourist site.
“Today, I direct the prison office, with the Ministry of Justice, FBI and internal security, to reopen an Alcatraz considerably widened and rebuilt,” wrote Trump.
The prison “would house the most ruthless and violent offenders in America”.
President Trump clashed with the courts concerning his policy to send alleged gang members to a prison in El Salvador. In March, he sent a group of more than 200 alleged Venezuelan gangs there. He also talked about sending “local criminals” to foreign prisons.
Alcatraz was originally a naval defense fort, and it was rebuilt at the beginning of the 20th century as a military prison. The Ministry of Justice took over it in the 1930s and it began to welcome convicted people of the federal penitentiary system. Among his most famous detainees were the notorious gangsters Al Capone, Mickey Cohen and George “Machine Gun” Kelly.
The prison was also made famous by the 1962 film, Birdman of Alcatraz, with Burt Lancaster, about the convicted murderer Robert Stroud, who, during a perpetuity imprisonment on prison island, developed an interest in birds and has become an expert ornithologist.
It was also the 1996 film site, The Rock, with Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage, about a former FBI captain and chemist from FBI who saves hostages from Alcatraz Island.
The prison closed because it was too expensive to continue working, according to the Federal Bureau of Prison website. It was almost three times more expensive to operate than any other federal prison, largely due to its island location.
It would take a huge sum of money to make Alcatraz a functional prison, said Professor Gabriel Jack Chin from the Davis School of Law from the University of California at the BBC.
The federal penitentiary system is actually down around 25% of its advanced population and “there are many empty beds” in existing prisons, said Chin. “So it is not clear if a new one is necessary.”
Alcatraz has “a difficult prison reputation” and Trump tries to send a message that his administration will be difficult for crime, Chin added.
The former lecturer of the Chamber, Nancy Pelosi, a Californian democrat whose district includes Alcatraz, said that the proposal was “not serious”, while the senator of the Democratic State for San Francisco, Scott Wiener, described the idea of ​​”deeply confused” in post on Instagram and “an attack on the rule of law”.
