A Big, Beautiful Alcatraz is only the beginning

Among the Sunday night demands from King Donald came this bizarre proclamation: “REBUILD AND REOPEN ALCATRAZ!” The latest Trumpian nocturnal emission evoked a time when America was a more “serious Nation…No longer will we tolerate these serious offenders who spread filth, blood, and mayhem on our streets.” Apparently, to return to law and order, all we need to do is restore the glory days of The Rock, which has been closed for 60 years and is currently a museum operated by the National Park Service.

To be charitable, our prison system is cruelly overcrowded, and under Trump’s rule, it is fixing to be even more so. We’re going to need facilities to house “America’s most ruthless and violent offenders,” and Arkham Asylum only exists in the imagination. But Trump’s curious dicta to restore a prison that most people have only seen the inside of in movies or on vacation shows a somewhat limited imagination. America has a vast repository of historical prison structures, any one of which would be crueler and more draconian than Alcatraz, which is virtually summer-camp-like because of its nice ocean views.

Two miles from downtown Philadelphia sits Eastern State Penitentiary, with its grim concrete walls and “wheel and spoke design.” The building, which is just sitting there mostly intact, once housed Al Capone, who, as we know, was both a criminal and a thug. Guards at Eastern State dunked prisoners in ice baths. Other punishments included the “Iron Gag,” “The Hole,” and the “Mad Chair.” Sounds appropriately harsh.

Then you have the Ohio State Reformatory, as seen on Hulu, Netflix, The Travel Channel and in The Shawshank Redemption, where it housed cinema’s most legendary incarcerated bromance between Andy and Red. With a dark legacy marked by overcrowding and abuse, all 250,000 square feet of the Reformatory are still standing, making it perfect for Trump’s plans to lock up all the baddies and throw away the key. As Andy Dufresne showed, escape is possible, though improbable.

That pretty much takes care of the Northeast, but we need broader regional coverage if we’re really going to make America Safe Again. Other possible historical prisons to reopen include the Gothic style West Virginia State Penitentiary, located in beautiful downtown Moundsville, with a “cruel and unusual history” marked by constant escapes and rioting. It’s only been closed for 32 years, so maybe it’ll just need some new plumbing and a coat of paint.

Also on the menu is the Old Idaho Penitentiary, “The Gibraltar of the West,” right in the middle of booming Boise. Closed since 1973, this former territorial prison was notorious for forced amputations of prisoners, inadequate food and water and countless escape attempts. Today it is a historical site that hosts ghost tours. What a waste of space.

I’m also partial to the Territorial Prison in Yuma, Arizona, Yuma’s number-one tourist attraction and the site of many scenes of both versions of the movie 3:10 To Yuma, which President Trump has certainly seen. It actually closed in 1909, but its original strap iron cells are still standing, with haunting memories of former inmates, including the notorious bandit Pearl Hart, resonating through its adobe walls. It would certainly be America’s hottest prison and is conveniently located close to the Mexican border.

But why limit our imagination to prisons operated by institutions of the United States government? Alcatraz has nothing on prisons formerly operated by federal enemies in US soil.

The site of the Andersonville Civil War confederate prison still exists in Georgia as a historic site. There, 30,000 Union soldiers lived in makeshift shanties called “shebangs” and suffered by the waters of a creek that became, according to History.com, “a cesspool of disease and human waste.” We have modern sanitation and could avoid that, but as it currently stands, Andersonville is just an enemy cemetery, primed for Trumpian real estate development, prison-style.

If Trump really meant business against the baddies, he’d bring back the British Ghost Ship of Brooklyn, the HMS Jersey, “a living hell for thousands of Americans either captured by the British or accused of disloyalty” during the Revolutionary War, according to the Amazon page of a book about the ship by Robert P. Watson: “Disease ran rampant and human waste fouled the air as prisoners suffered mightily at the hands of brutal British and Hessian guards.”

What’s going on right now off the coast of Brooklyn? Nothing but DEI art-making! Let’s make those waters useful again. To paraphrase the President, the reopening of the HMS Jersey, Andersonville and the Yuma Territorial Prison, among other spots like Alcatraz, will serve as a symbol of Law, Order and JUSTICE.

Imagine the paradise that the United States will be if President Trump restores Alcatraz to its former infamy. The thugs and bullies and illegal gangster drug lords will be off the streets, so little children will be free to play with their two dolls without fear. And unlike in Clint Eastwood’s heyday, there will be no escaping from this new Big, Beautiful Alcatraz. No birds, or birdmen, allowed.