He had the fame of impregnable prison, from which no one has ever managed (at least officially) to escape. Alcatraznotorious penitentiary on an island off the coast of San Francisco, closed for over sixty years And today among the most visited tourist destination in the United States, it could reopen.
Donald Trump would like it, that yesterday, in a post published on his platform Truth Socialsaid he wanted to “reconstruct and reopen Alcatraz”: “For too long America has been afflicted by ferocious, violent and recurrence criminals,” wrote the US president. «Today I give the Bureau of Prisons, together with the Department of Justice, the FBI and internal security, to reopen a version substantially expanded and reconstructed of Alcatraz ». In the President’s intentions, the new prison should serve To lock “the most ruthless and violent criminals in America”.
The proposal, which Trump defines an idea born recently, aims to leverage the symbolic value of Alcatraz as a penalty and control icon. “It is a symbol of law and order“He said, adding that” when we were a more serious nation, we did not hesitate to locate the most dangerous criminals and keep them away from every person to whom they could hurt “.
The reactions of the democratic front were not long in coming. Nancy Pelosiformer speaker of the Chamber and Californian deputy, liquidated the initiative as “Non -serious proposal”: «Alcatraz closed as a federal penitentiary more than sixty years ago. Now he is a beloved national park and an important tourist attraction », he wrote on X.
The comment of the democratic senator is more severe Scott Wiener, who defined the idea “deeply unbalanced” And “an attack in the rule of law” in a post on Instagram.
But the feasibility of the project is far from obvious. According to Professor Gabriel Jack Chin, a professor by right to the UC Davis, transforming Alcatraz again into an operational prison would require “a huge amount of money”, as reported by the BBC. The prison was in fact closed in 1963 mainly for prohibitive costs Management: keeping it operational cost almost three times more than managing any other federal penitentiary, above all due to its isolated position in the Bay of San Francisco.
In addition, he adds Chin, the Federal Penitentiary System “has about 25% less inmates today than the historical peak” and “There are already many beds available in existing prisons». So, he observes, “it is not clear at all what a new structure is used for.”
Alcatraz has a long story that intertwines chronicle, cinema and myth. It was first a military fortress, then transformed into military prison in the early twentieth century. In 1934 he was converted to federal prison to host the country’s most dangerous criminals. Among the best known prisoners: at the Capone, George “Machine Gun” Kenny and Mickey Cohen. No escape has ever been officially confirmed, even if five prisoners are “disappeared and presumably drowned”.
The prison was Location of the film Birdman of Alcatraz of 1962, with Burt Lancaster as Robert Stroud, the killer who became an ornithology expert in prison. In 1996 he was also the protagonist of the movie The Rockwith Sean Connery And Nicolas Cage, who transformed the island into a pop icon.
Today Alcatraz is managed by the National Park Service and welcomes over one million visitors a year. Transforming it again into a prison, observe many experts and politicians, would mean not only distorting a cultural heritage, but also investing enormous figures for a project that would have more propaganda value than practical.
Source: Vanity Fair
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