JAILHOUSE ROCK

Trump Wants to Make Alcatraz Great Again. That’s a Big Red Flag For America

Alcatraz isn’t being revived because it works, but because it intimidates. It has nothing to do with criminal justice, and everything to do with narrative control.

Opinion

President Trump wants to bring back Alcatraz—not as a museum for history buffs or field trips, but as a fully operational federal prison. This isn’t forward-thinking, but rather old-school authoritarianism, a boomer fantasy of how to “get tough” on crime.

He’s ordered the Department of Justice, Homeland Security, the FBI and the Bureau of Prisons to reopen and expand the infamous island facility to hold what he calls “America’s most ruthless and violent offenders.” It’s a move that feels less about public safety and more about raw assertion of power—an unmistakable message that control matters more than correction, and fear is more useful than fairness.

Trump’s obsession with Alcatraz isn’t rooted in modern policy thinking. It’s nostalgia masquerading as leadership. It’s The Rock on repeat—Sean Connery, smoke grenades, steel bars and swagger. Where El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele is building mega-prisons with LED floodlights and biometric scanners, Trump wants to dust off a Cold War fossil and Make It Great Again.

And just to underscore the absurdity of it all: last weekend, Trump retreated to his usual haunt—Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach. Between golf rounds, he likely caught a rerun of Escape from Alcatraz, which aired Saturday night and again Sunday morning on Miami’s PBS affiliate. If this administration has a policy pipeline, it runs straight through cable television into the authoritarian aesthetics of the digital age.

Bukele has become a social media darling on the authoritarian right. His “Terrorism Containment Center” is not just a prison. It’s propaganda infrastructure. Tens of thousands of men are detained and displayed: barefoot, shirtless, shackled and guarded by masked men with rifles in scenes of performative dominance that Trump openly admired. The irony is that while Bukele is innovating new machinery for state control, Trump is rummaging through the attic for something rusty to repurpose.

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In his hands, Alcatraz isn’t a facility. It’s a prototype. A hard slab of rock rising from the San Francisco Bay meant to show who’s in charge—not just of inmates, but of the American story.

But Alcatraz didn’t work. It was shut down in 1963—not by activists or reformers, but by bureaucrats fed up with its price tag. Sea air rusted its steel. Plumbing constantly failed. Heating was inadequate. (That’s part of the appeal. Trump doesn’t care that it was a hellhole—he likes that it was. The worse the conditions, the stronger the message.) But everything had to be shipped in at ludicrous cost. Even with a small inmate population, it drained federal resources. And it wasn’t even feared. Among hardened criminals, it became a badge of honor. It didn’t break them. It burnished them.

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Trump doesn’t care. He wants it back. Not to solve mass incarceration. Not to fix sentencing laws. Not to reduce recidivism. He wants it back because it “looks tough.” Because it makes him feel powerful. Because it’s a set piece he can point to and say, “This is what happens when you cross me.” It’s the penal equivalent of slapping his name in gold on a tower. A carceral vanity project. But it masks insecurity. If you have to build a fortress to prove you’re tough, you’re not.

Of course, there are real criminal justice reforms Trump could pursue. He could fix the bloated pretrial system that jails the poor while the rich walk free. He could fund rehabilitation programs that actually reduce crime and recidivism. He could end the financial incentives behind private prison contracts. He could invest in mental health care, expand parole and streamline clemency.

But none of that delivers what Trump craves. It’s not dramatic. It’s not camera-ready. So instead, he’s chosen Alcatraz.

And that should terrify anyone who still believes the justice system is more than a stage for political retribution.

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John Mac Ghlionn

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