Florida: The Prison State

Why stop with "Alligator Alcatraz?"

Photo: Dry Tortugas Torture Camp

Hello, hungry people.

Did you catch the news about Florida building a migrant detention center in the Everglades and calling it “Alligator Alcatraz?”

Construction has already begun at the site of an old airstrip in the swampy wilds between Naples and Miami that will soon be ready to house 5,000 detainees in tents. State officials say they won’t have to invest much money in security since dangerous wildlife surrounding the detention center — gators, giant Burmese pythons, mutated mosquitoes the size of B-52s — will serve as ad hoc prison guards.

This is just the sort of creative forward thinking that makes me proud to be a Floridian.

But why stop with “Alligator Alcatraz?” We have so many possible penitentiaries down here.

Leavenworth-a-Lago
Now that those once-secret documents have been removed from bathrooms and closets, the private club should have a little extra space in which to cram undocumented migrants, who could also be pulled into service as caddies. Detainees would be allowed to escape and given full citizenship after investing a minimum $500,000 in $TRUMP cryptocurrency.

Bikers Rikers Island
New York City’s most notorious jail ain’t got nothing on us. There are dozens of uninhabited islands in the Halifax River near Daytona Beach, created when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dredged the river in the 1950s. Pick an island and have it patrolled by leather-clad badasses from Daytona’s Bike Week. If inmates want to escape they’ll have figure out how to hijack a Harley and turn it into a hydrofoil.

Wholesome Folsom Prison
They’re going to Disney World! Disney already does a fabulous job of confining people on its grounds under harsh conditions and making them pay for the privilege. Let those Imagineers of theirs create yet another attraction line, this one for detainees only, where they stand around all day but don’t really get anywhere. Basically, Space Mountain but with more despair and fewer churros. If detainees want to escape, they can buy one of those “Lightning Passes,” that help you circumvent the long lines. But it will involve getting struck by real lightning.

Dry Tortugas Torture Camp
Our answer to El Salvador’s infamous CETCO prison. Eighty miles west of Key West, in the Gulf of Don’t-You-Dare-Say-Mexico, the Dry Tortugas are home to Fort Jefferson, built in 1846 and once used as a prison after the Civil War. The no-see-ums will drive detainees so crazy that they’ll jump in the water to escape. And the sharks will appreciate that.

Attica-chobee
Our homage to the upstate New York prison famous for its riots. We’d stick the Florida version smack in the middle of Lake Okeechobee and count on detainees to be deterred from escaping not only by more gators but the frequent toxic algae blooms that make swimming a lethal recreational activity. And if that didn’t stop them from trying to get way, we’d invoke another Florida tradition—wanton gunplay—and issue hunting licenses to good ol’ boys in bass boats.

***

OK, here’s the money-grubbing part.

If you enjoy what we’re serving at Bob’s Diner, aside from occasional indigestion, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. The yearly plan works out to about 30 cents per installment — much less than prison wages.

If you prefer to keep reading for free — and that’s fine, too — please pitch in by sharing Bob’s Diner with your friends and family. Substack keeps track of such things, which is kinda creepy, but if your referrals result in subscriptions then you can WIN A TRIP TO BORA-BORA! (Not true, but it can elevate you to paid-subscriber status, which has gotta be worth something.)

And finally, if you’ve got something to say, then say it. I much enjoy hearing from all of you, even the wingnuts,.