Alcatraz’s last living detainee on Trump’s plan to reopen the prison

When Charlie Hopkins thinks back to the three years he spent in one of the most famous in America Prisons, he remembers the most “deadly calm”.

In 1955, Hopkins was sent to Alcatraz – a prison on an isolated island off the coast of San Francisco – after causing trouble in other prisons to serve a 17 -year sentence for kidnapping and flight.

Falling asleep at night in his cell on the remote island, he said, the only sound was the whistle of the passing ships.

“It’s a lonely sound,” said Hopkins. “It reminds you of Hank Williams singing this song,” I’m so lonely that I could cry. “”

Now 93 years old and living in Florida, Hopkins said that the San Francisco National Archives informed him that he was probably the former prisoner Alcatraz Survivor. The BBC could not verify it independently.

In an interview with the BBC this week, Hopkins described life in Alcatraz, where he became friends with gangsters and once helped plan an unsuccessful escape. Although he closed decades ago, President Donald Trump recently said that he wanted to reopen him as a federal prison.

When Hopkins was transferred to high security prison in 1955 in an Atlanta establishment, he remembers that he was clean, but sterile. And there was little distractions-no radio at the time, and few books, he said.

“There was nothing to do,” he said. “You can walk back and forth in your cell or make pumps.”

Hopkins held part of the time with his work to clean Alcatraz, sweep the floors and polish them “until they shine,” he said.

He was sent to prison in 1952 in Jacksonville, Florida, for his role in a series of flights and kidnappings. He was part of a group that took hostages to cross roadblocks and flying cars, he said.

In Alcatraz, Hopkins had infamous neighbors. The establishment housed many violent criminals during its 30th anniversary – Al Capone; Robert Stroud, a murderer known as “Birdman of Alcatraz”; And the boss of crime James “Whitey” Bulger – being the subject of a crowd of movies and television shows.

22 acres island, 1.25 mile (2 kilometers) off San Francisco and surrounded by freezing waters with strong currents, Alcatraz was originally a naval defense force. It was rebuilt at the beginning of the 20th century as a military prison. The Ministry of Justice resumed it in the 1930s, transforming the establishment into a federal prison to combat organized crime crawling at the time.

Even in high security prison, Hopkins said that he had still managed to get in trouble and spent several days in the establishment’s “block of the establishment – the lonely isolation where the prisoners who behaved badly were detained and rarely released from their cells.

His longest passage there – six months – came after trying to help several other prisoners, including the notorious banner Forrest Tucker, Escape Alcatraz, said Hopkins. He helped steal metal saw blades from the prison electric boutique to cut the prison bars in the basement of the basement.

The plan did not work – the prison guards discovered the blades in other prison cells, said Hopkins. “A few days after they locked them, they locked me up,” he said.

But that did not stop one of the prisoners.

In 1956, when Tucker was taken to the hospital for a kidney operation, he stabbed his ankle with a pencil so that the prison guards had to remove his leg irons, Tucker told New Yorker. Then, when he was taken to obtain an x-ray, he controlled hospital guarantees and fled, he said.

He was captured in a hospital dress in a cornfield a few hours later.

While more and more prisoners were trying to escape Alcatraz over the years, officials have accelerated security, said Hopkins.

“When I left there in 1958, security was so tight that you couldn’t breathe,” he said.

All in all, there were 14 separate attempts in the years involving 36 prisoners, according to the National Park Service. One of the most famous involved Frank Morris, and the Brothers Clarence and John Anglin, who escaped in June 1962 by placing heads of paper-chew in their beds and bursting out ventilation ducts. They were never found, but the Federal Bureau of Investigation concluded that they had drowned in the cold waters surrounding the island.

A year later, the prison closed after the government determined that it would be more profitable to build new prisons than maintaining the isolated installations of the island.

Now, it is a public museum visited by millions each year that generates around 60 million dollars in income for Park Partners.

The building is decrepit, with peeling paint, rusty pipes and ruined toilets in each small cell. The construction of the main prison began in 1907, and more than a century of exposure to the elements made the place almost uninhabitable.

Trump, however, said this week that he wanted his government to reopen and extend the island’s prison for the “most ruthless and violent” offenders in the country.

Alcatraz “represents something very strong, very powerful” – Law and order, said Trump.

But experts and historians have said that Trump’s proposal to restore prison is eccentric because it would cost billions to repair and update with other federal facilities.

Hopkins agrees. “It would be so expensive,” he said.

“At the time, the sewer system entered the ocean,” he added. “They should find another way to manage this.”

Hopkins left Alcatraz five years before closing its doors for good. He had been transferred to a prison in Springfield, Missouri and had received psychiatric drugs that improved his behavior and helped him cure psychological problems, he said.

But supporter Avid Trump said that he did not think that the president’s proposal was serious.

“He doesn’t really want to open this place,” said Hopkins, adding that Trump was trying to “pass a point to the public” on punishing criminals and those who illegally enter the United States.

Hopkins was released in 1963, first working on a truck stop before taking other jobs. He returned to his original state, Florida, where he now has a daughter and a grandson.

After several decades reflecting on his crimes and his life in Alcatraz, he wrote a memory of 1,000 pages, with almost half of the book detailing his disturbed behavior, he said.

“You will not believe the problems I caused to them when I was there,” he said. “I can see now, looking back, that I had problems.”