Charlie Hopkins, 93, is one of the last men alive to have served time on Alcatraz.
He remembers silence. Not the peaceful kind—the kind that broke your spirit.
“There were no radios. No books. Just the sound of a ship’s whistle,” he told the BBC. “That’s a lonely sound. It reminds you of Hank Williams singing, ‘I’m so lonesome I could cry.’”
Hopkins was locked up on the infamous 22-acre island in 1955, transferred from another prison after getting into trouble behind bars. He spent years pacing back and forth in his tiny cell, doing push-ups, and slowly losing his sense of self.
And now, in 2025, Donald Trump wants to reopen it.
On May 4, Trump dropped a post on Truth Social promising to “REBUILD AND OPEN ALCATRAZ” to house what he called “vicious, violent, and repeat Criminal Offenders… the dregs of society.”
He says it’s time for America to get “serious again” and lock up its worst criminals far away from everyone else. The new Alcatraz, he says, would be “substantially enlarged and rebuilt.”
The question is: is this justice, or a return to punishment theatre?
For Hopkins, who walked out in 1963—the same year the prison closed for good—the memories are clear, and they’re not something he’d wish on anyone.
“There was nothing to do,” he says. “Nothing to hear. Just the sound of your own thoughts.”
Trump hasn’t said when or if this plan will actually go into motion. But the message is loud and clear. He’s looking to make Alcatraz a symbol of law, order—and political might.
For some, it’s about cracking down on chaos.
For others, it’s about reopening a wound that never really healed.
