Trade Gitmo for the Rock?
Speaker Pelosi isn’t keen on the idea, but a concept which has been suggested half in jest since the election surfaced more widely in political talk shows this week end. The idea at issue is re-opening the federal prison on Alcatraz Island, off the San Francisco embarcadero. Mrs. Pelosi doesn’t care for the idea, and has flatly said “no.’ when asked. She noted that Alcatraz is currently a National Park.
However, it seems that Madam Speaker is missing an opportunity. She, and the Democratic leadership, are following through on the calls from the Democratic party faithful, many of whom have been demanding the closure of the the federal military prison at the Guantanimo Nanval Base, on Cuba for several years. This was, in fact, much discussed by Democratic candidates during the presidential campaign in 2008, and President Obama campaigned stating that he favored closing the prison on Cuba. So, this should be a win-win for Madam Speaker. By re-conditioning Alcatraz as a federal maximum security prison, she will assist with several Democratic party objectives.
(1) Public spending. Conversion of Alcatraz back into a prison will be an opportunity for contractors to create jobs while providing a needed finished product – an operational prison. Money will be poured into the California economy for cement, steel, and other required building products, as well as wages for skilled building trades.
(2) More public spending. Prison guards and personnel will need to be employed. They will live in San Francisco, and spend money and pay taxes there.
(3) Public safety. Alcatraz has proven to be virtually escape proof, a good reason to utilize it again as a federal maximum security prison.
By transferring the prisoners who can not be released, or who can not find a willing host nation, from Gitmo to the Rock, the closure of the hated prison in Cuba will be effected. Since Madam Speaker has been arguing for this, it seems reasonable that she should be willing to accept the prisoners who cannot be repatriated to other nations into her district, rather than mine. Despite the Speaker’s displeasure with the idea, it seems that Alcatraz is a reasonable alternative to Guantianimo. I say let us get on with the job. The contractors and skilled trades are all looking for those contracts. How about it Madam Speaker?
Personally, I favor FDR’s methodology. (Surely you recall St. Frank, Gary? Is he a good enough American for you?) His way of handling Nazi saboteurs worked nicely: Talk or fry. Those who had useful information to offer went to prison until the war was over, the rest went to the electric chair. Captured terrorists or guerrillas with weapons but no uniform should be given the same choice.
Wasn’t it Robert Kennedy who proved mathematically that it would be cheaper to put inmates up at the Fairmont hotel than to keep them at Alcatraz?
On the subject of money, wouldn’t it be better for the economy to build a prison from scratch, rather than refurbishing an old one? I mean, it would create more jobs, right? And it wouldn’t put the Alcatraz sightseeing companies out of business.
I don’t know if it was Kennedy or not, but the idea of “reconditioning” Alcatraz is worthless, because it would be cheaper to tear the place down and start over.
Rather than do that… we do have a number of islands off the Pacific coast that could be used, or perhaps some unused military installations out in the lonely reaches of the Pacific.
But the point about Gitmo isn’t the location, it’s the procedures — unless those change, changing the place is pointless.
Murtha would welcome them to his district – good enough place to send them.
Err, Orson, surely you’re aware that Alcatraz is in Pelosi’s district? So far San Franciscans have been very tolerant of how ineffective she’s been as speaker because of her sheer seniority, but that would change rather quickly if she decided on such a ridiculous move.
As Roy notes, it would be better to build a new prison than to recondition Alcatraz. Your argument about it being good for the California and San Francisco economy is dubious, at best. A short spurt of money for the reconditioning of a building complex (a drop in the bucket for an economy the size of California’s) followed by hiring of prison staff? Yes, and then you can just go ahead and take away the jobs of all the tour guides, permanent island staff and ferry companies that live off one of San Francisco’s main tour attractions, plus add the loss of value as a destination city that SF would suffer as a result of having a maximum security prison in it. It would clearly hurt SF.
Besides, why this obsession over how secure the prison is? They are alleged (remember, not convicted!) terrorists, not super-villans. They lack superpowers, and are individually no more dangerous than any other dangerous criminal, even assuming they are all guilty, which has yet to be proved. We store psicopaths, mafia leaders and other terrorists in our regular prisons and so far they haven’t broken free, why this assumption that this would be different?
Claudia,
As far as the Supermax facilities. the fed one in CO has issues.
Sure – nobody broke out – yet. It would be total, utter niavity to assume that nobody will.
But you’re right, most are not convicted, how about transport to Spain, pile into a van, and let them free in some random neighborhoods. When we are able to put an airtight case against them, than we’ll recapture them again.
No reason to obsess over having a secure prison right?
I think the Alcatraz thing is a bit silly and just distracts us from discussion the issue.
But there is a real problem beyond just “what if they escape”. I don’t think that’s much of a concern. I’d be just as concerned (perhaps more) if a murderer or rapist escaped, but there isn’t an uproar about them being kept on American soil. However, what I think is concerning is that the prison could then become a target for terrorists.
Also, something perhaps even more important to discuss than were we hold them is that if some of them get new, expedient trials and are set free (even somewhere else) due to lack of evidence, they could go back to being terrorists as many have. The issue is do we treat them as alleged criminals, or as military combatants.
Claudia, the fact that Alcatraz is in Madam Speakers district is, from my perspective, a feature, not a bug. She and the Democrats want to close Guantanimo. Fine. But let us place the replacement prison in their district.
I agree that there are issues with Alcatraz, and I would be perfectly happy to see a new maximum security prison built on a similar California island. Either way, the underlying point is that the Europeans and the rest of the world seem very reluctant to welcome the Guantanimo detainees in THEIR home towns. This should be telling us something. They are all for freeing these men if it will not pose a danger to them. I do not think they Guantanimo prisoners should be in our home towns. As I noted in my response to the response now removed, FDR had a very pragmatic solution to these situations: Spies and guerrillas were tried and executed promptly, unless they wanted to share something useful. The Brits did the same thing during WW II. Spies frequently had a capture to coffin time of six months to a year. Sounds good to me. All of these men were captured as guerrillas or terrorists. So, it seems to me trials and executions all round are in order. But since the Democratic party doesn’t seem to approve of such logical ways of dealing with people engaging in violence against us, they want to incarcerate them. I don’t think this is the best approach, but since the Democrats are running the show, they should be the ones to take these people into their own communities. I repeat, Madam Speaker, you want these gents alive, then you take them in your district. If they are as harmless as you keep claiming, they should be no threat to the nice people in San Francisco, and they will be at home in the multicultural community.
NIMBY
Claudia, I think the original suggestion of moving the detainees to Alcatraz was probably just a rhetorical ploy to put Pelosi on the spot and not a serious suggestion.
But you seem to contradict yourself: on the one hand your immediate response was to say that Pelosi’s constituents would punish her for moving the detainees to their backyard, but on the other hand you say it’s silly for people to have concerns about that proximity. Which is it, or do you feel that the reality is that most people are uncomfortable with the idea even though they shouldn’t be?
@Mike
It seems to me he was trying to be silly. I might point out though, that murders and rapists tend to work alone or in tiny groups rather than as a collective.
C Stanley, it’s not really a contradiction, for a couple of reasons.
First, I’ll readily admit that people are perfectly capable of being hypocritical about the subject. Maxi prisons are fine, just as long as they aren’t in your back yard. Same tends to go for nuclear power plants or nuclear waste cemeteries. However beyond the “not in my back yard” attitude (common to people everywhere) there would be plenty of good reason to object to using Alcatraz. First and foremost it would be a really stupid stunt. St. Quintin, which is close to San Francisco, is already equipped as a Maximum security prison. Even assuming some sort of super powers on the part of (alleged) terrorists, it would be simpler and cheaper to refurbish St. Quintin to give it even tighter security than turn the derelict Alcatraz into a high tech prison.
Beyond that it would hurt San Francisco’s economy by eliminating one of it’s main tourist attractions. Alcatraz brings the city a ton of money every year, and San Franciscans quite understandably wouldn’t want to lose that.
Well, I realize that’s all true but she didn’t exactly say “No, Alcatraz wouldn’t work for a number of reasons but we can look at building a facility in my district”, now, did she?
Last time I checked, we were fighting physical countries back then. I don’t know for sure, but I gather uniformed soldiers outnumbered guerrillas. Is this feasible when the guerrillas outnumber the uniformed soldiers? Or displace them completely?
When your army becomes an army of guerrillas, what do you do?
Anyway, I’m all for supermax prisions, because Claudia is right on one thing. Terrorists are not going to grow wings and fly away. Last I checked, we kept Timothy McVeigh in a prison. Richard Reid is in a prison. Jose Padilla and Zacarias Moussaoui are in the same prison as Reid (can’t you imagine the conspiring that must be going on?)
If you’re worried about having a bunch of terrorists in the same place (unlike how they are now, apparently), why not split them up? We already have two volunteer places, after all. Congressman Murtha is all gung-ho about it, and we should place some in Speaker Pelosi’s district, just to spite her.
Michael, you point to one of our problems. We really are not willing to decide how to treat terrorists. As you note, Nazi spies were agents of a nation which was at war with us. Islamic militant terrorists are not representing a nation state as much as an ideological / religious organization.
I am not recommending that we declare war on nations where these people are residing. But, perhaps we could go back to an earlier campaign – and treat anti-government militants the way we treated the Barbary pirates, and maritime nations in general used to treat pirates: as armed bandits subject to armed combat when encountered, and execution when captured. I know that concept is not in agreement with today’s ‘kinder, gentler’ approach to human relations, but I think we, and the rest of the world should consider a return to more muscular defense of public safety. Or, we could treat them as revolutionaries attempting to overthrow our government – which, I would think, renders them guerrillas, subject to execution when captured engaging in attacks on civilians.
Your final point would be logical to me – parcel these guys out into the maximum security prisons in the districts of the congressmen and senatros who wanted to close Guantanimo. Madam Speaker, we have some guests for you – select your prison.
I can’t wait till they get into the US prisons and they find out that they are not so, umm, culturally sensitive.
With a serious proposal to re-seed the Capitol Mall as part of the recovery spending, the suggestion that Alcatraz be restored to federal prison status no longer looks quite as fiscally irresponsible. Again, I agree that there may be, and probably are more cost effective ways to house prisoners. But, folks, the point is that a lot of the stimulus package is not the most logical way to spend the money. OK, on to more serious matters….