President Trump recently made headlines with a proposal to turn Alcatraz back into a federal prison. Some of your Editors panelists find the idea completely untenable, and Jim points out that “right now, as a National Park Service site, it brings in about $60 million a year in revenue. It’s one of the most popular tourist attractions in San Francisco. If you want to turn it into a modern prison facility, it’s going to cost a heck of a lot of money. There’s no water running toward it. There’s no electricity. You’d have to bring everything on.”

He considers the idea to be like so many of Trump’s other proposals tossed out on social media: “They stir up the media for 24 hours, and then he forgets about it. And I see no reason to think that we’re actually going to reopen Alcatraz as a federal prison.”

Charlie largely agrees, but he’s not totally opposed to the idea. “I don’t think it is intrinsically a bad thing for us to have a prison that we can see,” Charlie says. “Say, ‘Look, that is where very bad people are held. People who have committed federal crimes that we consider to be heinous, and we really don’t want them to escape.’ So if it were cost-effective to have such a place, I don’t think that would bother me.”

“I don’t like the idea of completely hiding the punitive systems in this country.”

The Editors podcast is recorded on Tuesdays and Fridays every week and is available wherever you listen to podcasts.