I recently went on holiday to America and visited many different tourist destinations. One of these destinations was Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay.
Alcatraz Island is notorious for being home to Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, a prison famous for holding some of America’s worst criminals, including the likes of Al Capone. You often hear stories about Alcatraz, but when I visited it myself, I learned a lot about it that I didn’t know or realise before. One such example is that although there were a few escape attempts, nobody was ever confirmed to have escaped, despite what you might see in media such as films, books or games. The water surrounding the island was too cold and the island was too distant from the mainland for swimming to freedom to be feasible.
Another thing that I didn’t previously know about Alcatraz Island is that there were people who weren’t prisoners who lived on the island outside of the prison itself. These consisted of wardens, military officers and their families. It turns out that there were children who lived calm and normal lives on the island outside of the prison. This is something I never knew until I visited myself because the idea of children living so close to some of America’s most ruthless convicted criminals seems crazy.
It was interesting to see what the prison actually looked like and to hear how it actually was compared to the stories and the reputation that you hear about outside the island.
