Trump's call to reopen Alcatraz as a prison could be stymied by roadblocks

In its heyday, Alcatraz Island housed more than 260 prisoners, with notorious gangsters such as Al Capone, George "Machine Gun" Kelly and James "Whitey" Bulger serving time on the rocky outpost.

In its heyday, Alcatraz Island housed more than 260 prisoners, with notorious gangsters such as Al Capone, George "Machine Gun" Kelly and James "Whitey" Bulger serving time on the rocky outpost.

With its closing in 1963 after it fell into disrepair, the federal prison off San Francisco found a new life as a popular tourist destination — one that continues to draw more than a million visitors a year as a national historic landmark.

That could all change again if President Donald Trump gets his way. Trump wrote Sunday on social media that he is directing the federal Bureau of Prisons, the Justice Department and other agencies to "reopen a substantially enlarged and rebuilt Alcatraz" to the most "ruthless and violent offenders."

But federal corrections experts and historians caution that while such a project may be especially "symbolic" to Trump, any plan would be incredibly expensive and inefficient, particularly when the federal government's mission is to slash spending and prisons remain strained by staffing shortages.

"You'd be going in and basically removing a national landmark just to set up a prison that literally would be for the optics mostly, because it doesn't make the most sense financially to establish something like that there," said Michael Esslinger, who has written five books about Alcatraz's history and estimates he has visited the island at least 500 times.