Criminal Justice

Reopening Alcatraz Is an Expensive, Unnecessary Pipe Dream

The Bureau of Prisons is struggling to staff the prisons it currently operates. Reopening Alcatraz would be unrealistic and redundant.

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Alcatraz Island | Apolline Guillerot-Malick/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom
Alcatraz Island ( Apolline Guillerot-Malick/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom)

President Donald Trump announced Sunday that he's ordered the federal government to rebuild and reopen the infamous Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary. However, that plan will likely require a massive investment in a dysfunctional federal prison system that can barely staff the prisons it currently operates.

"REBUILD, AND OPEN ALCATRAZ!" Trump posted on Truth Social.

"The reopening of ALCATRAZ will serve as a symbol of Law, Order, and JUSTICE," the president continued later in the post.

The federal penitentiary on San Francisco Bay's Alcatraz Island opened in 1934 as a last stop for the federal prison system's most troublesome and violent inmates. But it lasted less than three decades due to the exorbitant costs of operating an island prison. It closed in 1963.

"The Bureau of Prisons (BOP) will vigorously pursue all avenues to support and implement the President's agenda," BOP Director William Marshall says. "I have ordered an immediate assessment to determine our needs and the next steps. USP Alcatraz has a rich history. 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."

Reopening Alcatraz would likely take years of construction and a huge influx of funding and manpower to the BOP, which the Trump administration has so far been unwilling to provide the agency.

The BOP has been plagued in recent years by chronic staffing shortages, crumbling facilities, and a culture of corruption. In many federal prisons correctional officers are frequently forced to work double shifts, and nurses and auxiliary staff have been pressed into guard duty in extreme cases. Senate investigations and media reports have identified widespread failures to prevent sexual assaults, provide basic medical care, and properly document and investigate deaths behind prison walls. Last year, the BOP announced it would close a women's prison where sexual abuse was so common that it was known as the "rape club."

The Biden administration put retention bonuses in place to try to improve or at least maintain staffing levels. It spent $229 million on retention incentives in 2024, according to Government Executive. However, the Trump administration reduced or eliminated those bonuses for roughly 23,000 BOP employees in February as part of its cost-cutting measures.

Local chapters of federal correctional officer unions already claim that the cancellation of the bonuses has led to resignations at numerous BOP facilities.

Reopening Alcatraz would also be redundant. The BOP already operates ADX Florence, a supermax prison in Colorado. It holds the federal prison system's most serious and violent offenders—terrorists, spies, murderers, cartel bosses—in solitary cells for 23 hours a day. In fact, it's called "the Alcatraz of the Rockies." No one has ever escaped. Former warden Robert Hood once memorably described ADX Florence as "a clean version of hell."

"I don't know what hell is, but I do know the assumption would be, for a free person, it's pretty close to it," Hood told 60 Minutes in 2007.

ADX Florence has been the subject of several high-profile lawsuits over the effects of prolonged, extreme isolation on inmates' mental health.

The problem, it would seem, isn't that ADX Florence is too soft, but that it's not outwardly hellish enough for the Trump administration's liking—not the sort of crude symbol and spectacle that it prefers. It doesn't make for good TV.

But unless the Trump administration wants to spend a mountain of taxpayer money, the only people staffing the new Alcatraz, if it's ever finished, will be the ghosts of the old prison. In any case, it will be another bloated, unnecessary boondoggle from a White House that promised to trim government waste.