US Penitentiary Alcatraz: Seven Prisons

Alcatraz prisoners walk along Broadway.

Advertised as a home for the “worst of the worst,” USP Alcatraz was an experiment, the prototype of our supermax prisons. Those who failed to abide by the rules in the federal prison system ended up on Alcatraz, not necessarily for the crime they committed, but for their behavior in other federal prisons. Gangsters like Al Capone and George “Machine Gun” Kelly did time on the Rock, but so did men with mental health issues like Joseph Bowers or those who defied racial segregation like Robert Lipscomb. The Federal Bureau of Prisons rebuilt the cellhouse and converted the military prison into a modern maximum-security institution. The penitentiary closed for good in 1963 because of the expenses of operating a prison on a rock in the middle of the Bay. 

What other options to prisons exist? 

The US prison system holds more than two million people at a cost of $80 billion annually. Many of the incarcerated have mental health issues and drug addictions.

Are the costs worth it? Or do we need to rethink incarceration as a universal system of punishment?