President Donald Trump’s latest fantastic notion is to repurpose Alcatraz Island, one of the National Park Service’s most popular historical sites, as the remote, isolated California prison it used to be.
It was costing nearly three times as much to operate as other federal prisons, which is why Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy made the sensible decision to close it in 1963.
Every necessity, such as fuel, food and water, had to be barged in. The buildings, visibly crumbling in the salty environment of San Francisco Bay, needed major repairs. Contrary to legend, it wasn’t escape-proof, either.
The $151 million that Trump is asking Congress to squander on Alcatraz would barely begin to restore it as a prison. The operating expenses would be as extreme as before, if not more so.
But at least he’s asking Congress, rather than acting by imperial fiat like he did by destroying the White House’s East Wing for a grotesquely oversized monument to bad taste.
What’s most interesting about his Alcatraz fantasy is how it displays Trump’s obsessions with symbolism and cruelty.
He has written of it as a “symbol of law, order and JUSTICE.” What he means is punishment as hard as possible, at least for the criminals he doesn’t see fit to pardon.
Trump was clearly under the impression that no one had ever escaped from Alcatraz. That’s debatable. Over 29 years, according to the Bureau of Prisons, 36 men attempted 14 separate escapes. Five of them are still listed as “missing and presumed drowned.”
Although San Francisco Bay is cold, the fitness icon Jack La Lanne once swam to the island pulling a rowboat, and several children also made the swim.
It would disappoint Trump to know there are no man-eating sharks.
Source: Korea Times News
