President Trump says he is ordering federal agencies to rebuild and reopen Alcatraz — the notorious maximum security prison that closed more than 60 years ago.
“I am directing the Bureau of Prisons, together with the Department of Justice, FBI, and Homeland Security, to reopen a substantially enlarged and rebuilt ALCATRAZ, to house America’s most ruthless and violent Offenders”.
The historic former U.S. Penitentiary Alcatraz, opened in 1934, is widely known as The Rock. Its buildings dominate the craggy landscape of Alcatraz Island, which lies about 1.5 miles north of San Francisco’s famed Fisherman’s Wharf.
Alcatraz once housed dangerous criminals such as the infamous mobster Al Capone, under an incarceration strategy that sought to concentrate difficult prisoners in one facility, segregating them from less dangerous inmates in the prison system.
Trump’s message suggests he wants to restore Alcatraz to its original dual purpose. The twin goals for building the original prison, according to the Federal Bureau Of Prisons, were “to deal with the most incorrigible inmates in Federal prisons, and to show the law-abiding public that the Federal Government was serious” about stopping rampant crime in the 1920s and 1930s.”
