Donald Trump wants to reopen the Alcatraz prison. Sixty -two years after the final closing, the president of USA He has ordered the Department of Justice and the Security Agencies that adopt measures to “reopen a substantial Alcatraz expanded and rebuilt to house the most ruthless and violent criminals in America. “The Republican wants to be” a symbol of the law, order and justice “, the same pillars of the rule of law that he himself challenges daily. There is only one problem: both experts and diverse qualified voices consider that it is a” impracticable “and” absurd “idea.
The myth of Alcatraz-or the rock-does not necessarily coincide with its reality, as the tourists who visit it after touring the two kilometers that separate it from the bay of the bay from the bay of San Francisco. The first evokes an isolated and impregnable prison, a penal To the Capone o Machine Gun Kelly. But the harsh reality is that it was neither safely nor particularly easy to manage. Not even in 1963, when he closed its doors.
The cell gallery is “totally inoperable,” he told the ‘San Francisco Chronicle’ John Martini, a penalty historian and keeps Alcatraz from the 70s from the 70s. running water in sewerage or even electricity in parts of the Cell block. “When he closed he fell apart, he would have needed a great reconstruction project and, that, only to adapt it to the 1963 standards,” Martini said, who considers that the prison would have to be totally demolished and built from its foundations so that it can be viable.
Alcatraz was always very expensive to maintain, one of the main reasons for its closure. According to the Federal Prison Office, the maintenance of its inmates cost almost three times more than in any other federal prison in the country. Among other things because there are no natural water sources in the rock. Both water and food or fuel were transported daily In boat from San Francisco. To what you have to add the constant Corrosion of its facilities for marine water and inclement weather, as well as the impact of frequent seismic tremors. “It is much more expensive to feed the prisoners there than in any other federal prison,” said the then State Attorney General, the then State Attorney General, Robert Kennedywhen ordering its closure, consummated in the spring of 1963. Ten years later it would be managed by the National Parks Service. He currently receives 1.5 million visitors a year, who coexist with their ubiquitous seagulls and cormoranes.
Sound leaks
Kennedy justified the closure for the savings he would mean for the taxpayer. But also for Security issues. That same month of June 1962 Three men escaped from Alcatraz scratching the walls with a splane and sneaky through its pipe system. It was never known what happened to them, although speculation abounds. The next day the authorities found a rowing, two life jackets and a bag with letters and directions, but no trace of their bodies. Six months after that escape, another inmate managed to swim to the coast of San Francisco, where he was arrested.
But there is another factor that gets in the Trump’s occurrence. Perhaps even more decisive than the previous ones. The Islet of Alcatraz has just over Two square kilometers. It is a tiny rock. At its time of greatest congestion it came to house 336 inmates When federal maximum security prisons can host more than 5,000 prisoners today. Its reconstruction would also be “extraordinarily expensive,” according to ‘The New York Times’. All this in a moment of severe budget cuts, also in the Department of Justice.
“It’s one idea absurd” The Californian senator has said Scott Wiener. In fact Trump, who has sent to date hundreds of migrants to Guantanamo and al Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) In El Salvador, two black holes in human rights, has justified the idea not only for its claim to send a message to criminals but also to judges who do not fold their dictates.
“We will stop being hostages of criminals, thugs and judges who are afraid of doing their job and allow us to expel the criminals who arrived in our country illegally, ”he wrote on Sunday in Truth Social. A message that some Democrats have interpreted as another Threat to the rule of law. “If Trump is serious about Alcatraz, it will be another step in his dismantling of democracy with the creation of A Gulag in the Bahía de San Francisco”, Added Scott, the senator from that same city. Also the governor of California, Gavin Newson, has made fun of the president’s plans.” It seems that it is again the day of distraction in Washington DC, “said Newson through his spokesmen.
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