October 22, 2024: Prison Stories: Alcatraz

[On October 27th,1994, the U.S. Justice Department announced that the population infederal and state prisons had topped one million for the first time in Americanhistory. To commemorate that sobering and horrifying statistic, one that hasonly gotteninfinitely worse in the thirty years since, this week I’llAmericanStudy prison stories from throughout our history. Leading up to aweekend post highlighting some vital further PrisonStudying reading!]

On why it’s okayto turn a prison into a tourist attraction—and what we could do instead.

San Francisco’s Pier 39 is one of the more interesting tourist areas I’veseen—because of its unique origin point, as the site of an annual (and nowseemingly permanent) gathering of sea lions; because of the collection of stores and games and entertainments that hassprung up around that focal point, making the pier feel a bit like acombination of Coney Island and the Mall of America; and because it’s also thelaunching point for tours and explorations of Alcatraz, the island, National Park, and former federal prison in San Francisco Bay. Asa result of that latter connection to The Rock (the penitentiary, not theaction film starring Connery and Cage at their most, well, Connery and Cage),Pier 39 also houses the Alcatraz Gift Shop, a store where you can buy, among countless other things, baby clothesdesigned to look like inmates’ apparel (right down to the numbered nametags).

When I firstencountered the gift shop, I found it in pretty poor taste, a crasscommercialization of a site where over a thousand Americans were imprisoned, many for life and all in the most bleak maximum security conditions. I’dstill say that’s part of the story, although the gift shop’s earnings dosupport the National Park and thus (as I understand it) the very deservingNational Park Service as a whole. But I would also say that the gift shop, likethe National Park, like the tours and explorations of the island, and perhapseven like the action film, although that would be a stretch at best, has thepotential to connect tourists and visitors to the history of the prison—andthat such a connection, like any burgeoning historical interest, could lead aswell to further investigation and engagement with issues in the present, withthe broader histories and stories of America’s prisons and prisoners. I’ve longsince come to the conclusion that almost any method of engaging Americans withour histories, as long as it doesn’t blatantly misrepresent or falsify thatpast, is worthwhile, and certainly the Alcatraz tourism industry has thepotential to produce such engagement.

On the otherhand, there’s another Alcatraz history, one located after the prison’s 1963closure and before its 1973 opening as a National Park, that isn’t part of thegift shop at all, nor, I would argue, much present in the island’s touristnarratives more broadly. That’s the 1969 takeover of the island by a group ofNative Americans affiliated with the American Indian Movement; this particular community called themselves “Indians of All Tribes” andhoped to turn the island into a cultural center. During the nearly two years of occupation, thisactivist effort certainly succeeded in raising awareness and changing national conversations, although (as was the case with each AIM endeavor) italso produced unintended acts of destruction and violence. The history of theoccupation is thus a complex one, connected to longer-term and even morecomplex histories and obviously unable to be turned into a gift shop product;but why couldn’t Alcatraz become the site of a cultural center, one that couldinclude not only Native American communities and stories but those of the manyother cultures that have called and continued to call the Bay Area home? Notsure I can imagine a more inspiring future for a former prison.

Nextprison story tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Prison stories or histories (or contemporary contexts) you’dhighlight?