Aerial view of the former Alcatraz prison, in the Bay of San Francisco in California, May 16, 2024 (AFP / Josh Edelson)
Donald Trump announced on Sunday evening that it has given his administration to modernize and reopen the emblematic prison of Alcatraz closed for more than 60 years, in the Bay of San Francisco, to incarcerate the “most dangerous and violent criminals”.
“For too long, America has been the victim of vicious, violent and recurrent criminals, the lie of society, which will never bring anything other than misery and suffering,” wrote the conservative republican billionaire on its social social network.
“This is why Today I order at the prisons office, as well as at the Ministry of Justice, to (the federal police) FBI and the Ministry of the Interior to reopen, enlarge substantially and rebuild Alcatraz to enclose the most dangerous and violent criminals in America,” he added.
Donald Trump believes that the restart of the establishment, closed in March 1963, will be a “symbol of law, order and justice”.
With the latter announces, the American president takes a new step in the fight against crime, a key element of his second mandate in the White House.
– Eastwood, “Escaded Alcatraz” –
The establishment, where the greatest chefs of the mafia had been imprisoned and in particular Al Capone, was closed after only 29 years of service due to too high operating costs, according to the American prisons office, responsible for the administration of federal prisons in the United States.
The federal high security prison entered posterity in 1962 with the spectacular escape of three detainees, including Frank Morris, then inspired a book in 1963 (“L’Escadé d’Alcatraz” by J. Campbell Bruce) followed in 1979 of a film in the same way of Don Siegel, with Clint Eastwood.
Today, the American agency The prison administration explains that Alcatraz cost almost three times more than any other federal prison.
The geographical isolation of this prison, located on a rocky island, generated many costs, such as routing by food, or 3.8 million liters of drinking water per week, the island with no source of fresh water.
And according to estimates, three to five million dollars had been injected into restoration and maintenance work of the establishment in order to maintain it open, from the same source.
During its 29 years of service, the average prison population of Alcatraz was between 260 and 275 people, according to the prison office, less than 1% of the total population of federal prisons.
“In Alcatraz, a prisoner (had) four rights: food, clothing, accommodation and medical care. Everything else was a privilege that was to be won. Among the privileges that a prisoner could win, there was the work, correspondence and visits to family members, access to the prison library and recreational activities such as painting and music”, details the federal agency.
Located two kilometers from the coast, the former prison is today a tourist attraction of the Bay of San Francisco, California.
Having become a national park in 1972, Alcatraz fascinates as much by his exceptional situation as by his sinister past of federal penitentiary.
The rocky island attracts more than a million visitors from around the world each year.
