(5 May 2025)
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ASSOCIATED PRESS
Alcatraz Island, California – 05 May 2025
1. Various aerials of Alcatraz Island
STORYLINE:
President Donald Trump wants to convert Alcatraz back into a federal prison, decades after the California island fortress was converted into a U.S. tourist destination because it had become too costly to house America’s worst criminals.
The prison off the coast of San Francisco is where the government sent notorious gangsters Al Capone and George “Machine Gun” Kelly as well as lesser-known men who were considered too dangerous to lock up elsewhere.
Circled by herons and gulls and often shrouded in fog, Alcatraz has been the setting for movies featuring Sean Connery, Nicolas Cage and Clint Eastwood.
Trump says Alcatraz, now part of the National Park Service, suddenly is needed to house America’s “most ruthless and violent” criminals.
“When we were a more serious Nation, in times past, we did not hesitate to lock up the most dangerous criminals, and keep them far away from anyone they could harm. That’s the way it’s supposed to be,” Trump said Sunday on his Truth Social site.
California Democratic State Sen. Scott Wiener criticized Trump, saying he wants to create a “domestic gulag right in the middle of San Francisco Bay.”
Alcatraz is in the bay and visible from San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. It is best known for its years as a federal prison, from 1934-63, but its history is much longer.
President Millard Fillmore in 1850 declared the island for public purposes, according to the park service, and it soon became a military site. Confederates were housed there during the Civil War.
By the 1930s, the government decided that it needed a place to hold the worst criminals, and Alcatraz became the choice for a prison.
The remoteness eventually made it impractical. Everything from food to fuel had to arrive by boat.
The cost to house someone there in 1959 was $10.10 a day compared with $3 at a federal prison in Atlanta, the government said. It was cheaper to build a new prison from scratch.
Despite the location, many prisoners tried to get out: 36 men attempted 14 separate escapes into the bay, according to the FBI. Nearly all were caught or didn’t survive the cold water and swift current.
AP Video: Noah Berger
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