And on the back of Donald Trump’s suggestion that the world’s most notorious jail be reopened for prisoners… a return to Alcatraz.
The penitentiary famed for being impregnable from jail breaks held some of the world’s most dangerous criminals.
Al Capone, ‘Machine Gun’ Kelly, ‘The Birdman of Alcatraz’ Robert Franklin Stroud and James ‘Whitey’ Bulger among them.
Opened as a penitentiary on the rocky island 1.25 miles off San Francisco in 1934 it closed as a jail in 1963.
Tour de force
Not that all the baddies had gone away, it was dimes, buckles and cents which was the driver for change.
And a nascent tourist industry built up in 1973 around Alcatraz, or Gannet Island in Spanish.
And it has drawn millions to the fortress since.
Most of us thankfully only pass through its doors and hear the big clanky chains as visitors.
A Wilde sentence
Prisons have long held a fascination for the curious tourist.
My first working visit to an active prison was to Reading Gaol.
Where, of course, Oscar Wilde, sentenced to two years’ hard labour for ‘acts of Sodomy’ wrote the searing Ballad of Reading Gaol.
Carved in history
Prisons have since the dawn of time held the guilty, innocent and martyred.
Many have literally left their mark as you will find out first-hand in Kilmainham Gaol in Dublin.
Where the heroes of the 1916 Easter Rising were held before their execution.
And where the gangrenous James Connolly, proud son of Edinburgh, died strapped to a seat at the hands of a firing squad.
Mandela to Papillon
Islands have long been used for jails from our own Gannet Island, Bass Rock, off North Berwick here on the east of Scotland.
To Devil’s Island (Cayenne, French Guiana) which held Henri Charriere, immortalised in the Steve McQueen movie Papillon.
To Robben Island, off South Africa’s Western Cape in South Africa.
Where you can walk in the footsteps of its most famous inmate Nelson Mandela.
Alcatraz, of course has given rise to a raft of movies.
The most famous real-life jailbreak being the tale of the three escapees.
Who to this day it is disputed whether they ever got to freedom or died in the freezing waters.
A fate that won’t, of course, befall the modern tourist who want to make a return to Alcatraz on a day or night tour.
So get in quick because it might all change if Donald Trump brings the island back as a penal colony.
