Scott Jennings on Reopening Alcatraz: There’s Fussing over Deportations to Foreign Prisons, ‘Don’t We Need More Prisons?’

PHILLIP: “Was the president watching too many movies this weekend or something?”
HILL: “People have suggested that.”
PHILLIP: “The — the — this is the era of DOGE. The idea of reopening a prison that’s been closed for many, many decades because it just doesn’t make sense to house people there, why?”
JENNINGS: “Well, does it? I don’t know. He said he was going to study it. I mean, we have a prison overcrowding problem. You’ve been fussing about recently him sending American criminals overseas to their prisons. Don’t we need more prisons in the United States? What’s wrong with this?”
PHILLIP: “Okay. Okay. Well, I mean, look — “
JENNINGS: “I mean, what’s the matter?”
PHILLIP: “Let’s take it at face value. Why Alcatraz? It costs three times as much to put prisoners there than to put them — “
JENNINGS: “How do you know?”
PHILLIP: “You could go put them in the desert.”
JENNINGS: “You run a — you run a actuary study on it over the weekend?”
PHILLIP: “Okay. All right. Let me — let me — hold on — hold on.”
JENNINGS: “I mean, we don’t know. What’s wrong with studying it?”
PHILLIP: “All right, don’t take my word for it. Don’t take my word for it. Here is the Federal Bureau of Prisons: ‘Alcatraz closed after 29 years of operation because the institution was too expensive to continue operating. An estimated 3 to 5 million was needed just for restoration and maintenance work to keep the prison open. That figure did not include the daily operating costs. Alcatraz was nearly three times more expensive to operate than any other federal prison.’ It is in the middle of a body of water.”
JENNINGS: “What would it cost to build a new one? How many millions? I don’t know. But I know we need more prisons. I know we need more space.”
PHILLIP: “All right. You know, it’s also — “
JENNINGS: “You know, I’m trying to study it. I don’t have a problem with studying it.”
PHILLIP: “What — what it — you know, it’s also possible to say that this doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense.”
HILL: “It’s all right to call it a dumb idea.”
JENNINGS: “Why?”
HILL: “Because it’s not [inaudible]. It doesn’t make any sense.”