In its heyday, Alcatraz Island housed more than 260 prisoners, with notorious gangsters such as Al Capone, George “Machine Gun” Kelly and James “Whitey” Bulger serving time on the rocky outpost.
With its closing in 1963 after it fell into disrepair, the federal prison off San Francisco found a new life as a popular tourist destination — one that continues to draw more than a million visitors a year as a national historic landmark.
That could all change again if President Donald Trump gets his way. Trump wrote Sunday on social media that he is directing the federal Bureau of Prisons, the Justice Department and other agencies to “reopen a substantially enlarged and rebuilt Alcatraz” to the most “ruthless and violent offenders.”
But federal corrections experts and historians caution that while such a project may be especially “symbolic” to Trump, any plan would be incredibly expensive and inefficient, particularly when the federal government’s mission is to slash spending and prisons remain strained by staffing shortages.
“You’d be going in and basically removing a national landmark just to set up a prison that literally would be for the optics mostly, because it doesn’t make the most sense financially to establish something like that there,” said Michael Esslinger, who has written five books about Alcatraz’s history and estimates he has visited the island at least 500 times.
The National Park Service manages Alcatraz.
J. Elizabeth Peace, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of the Interior, said in an email that “the President’s statement speaks for itself,” and declined to comment further.
Before Alcatraz was closed, it was determined that it would take at least $4 million to renovate it and that the physical isolation of the island was a major reason it cost so much to maintain. For example, fresh water had to be barged to the island every week.
In a news release issued in 1962, BOP Director James Bennett said it was not an “economically sound policy” to invest millions of dollars to rehab Alcatraz. Housing an inmate in Alcatraz cost more than three times what it cost in Atlanta, the BOP said.
It’s unclear how much it would cost to build a new prison on Alcatraz from scratch. The BOP’s newly installed director, William Marshall III, said in a statement Monday that he has ordered an assessment on “next steps” for a reopened U.S. penitentiary.
“USP Alcatraz has a rich history,” Marshall said. “We look forward to restoring this powerful symbol of law, order, and justice. We will be actively working with our law enforcement and other federal partners to reinstate this very important mission.”
For comparison, a new federal prison that would hold 1,400 inmates in Letcher County, Kentucky, near the Virginia border, is estimated to cost more than $500 million.
Walter Pavlo, president of the consulting firm Prisonology LLC, whose experts include former BOP case managers and wardens, said he could easily see the price of rebuilding a prison on Alcatraz surpassing that of the Kentucky facility. In addition, there are other costs associated with operating a maximum-security facility that requires state-of-the art technology and infrastructure, particularly for a property that has had a long and colorful history of escape attempts.
Federal prisons are typically built in isolated and rural communities. Having one in the San Francisco Bay Area, one of the most expensive places to live in the country, would require competitive salaries, as well, Pavlo said. He said those corrections officers and staff members would need to be experienced in dealing with dangerous offenders.
The BOP currently houses such prisoners at its “Supermax” in Florence, Colorado, south of Colorado Springs.
Trump “wants a showplace for high-profile criminals that people can see,” Pavlo said. “And there’s no higher-profile place than Alcatraz.”
Some elected officials in California are downplaying Trump’s plan to revert Alcatraz into a working prison.
“It is now a very popular national park and major tourist attraction,” Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., the former House speaker, whose district includes the island, said on X. “The President’s proposal is not a serious one.”
The idea began taking shape after Trump took office for his second term. His son Donald Trump Jr. posted on X that “maybe we should also reopen Alcatraz?!?!” in response to his father’s announcing preparations for a facility at the U.S. military camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to house thousands of migrants.
In 1981, the Reagan administration also examined Alcatraz as a place to hold detainees fleeing Cuba via the Mariel boatlift, but the idea was rejected because the island did not have the proper resources and, by then, it was a magnet for tourists.
Alcatraz’s operations began in the mid-19th century, first as a military fort to house prisoners, until the federal government transferred it to the Justice Department. The federal prison opened in 1934. Over the years, Alcatraz — nicknamed The Rock — was the scene of dramatic escapes and a deadly siege by inmates.
Its purpose was “really a way to isolate inmates from the news and from society,” Esslinger said. “It was kind of like this iron curtain where no information was going in or out.”
But Alcatraz was ultimately not worth maintaining. In 1962, ahead of the prison’s closing, the BOP determined the salt air was severely corroding the building. Meanwhile, the lack of a sewage system meant wastewater was being dumped directly into the bay.
The island gained national attention again in 1969 when a group of Native American activists occupied it until 1971.
David Widner, whose uncles, convicted bank robbers John and Clarence Anglin, escaped from Alcatraz in 1962, said that given the island’s lore and public fascination, “it would make sense for it to remain the way it is.”
“But do I think Trump’s capable of turning it around? Sure,” Widner said. “With the right kind of money, it could be redone.”
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