Alcatraz is on an island 1.25 miles off the coast of San Francisco, California. Alcatraz is a prison that held the most obnoxious prisoners around. The maximum high - security prison was made for prisoners that constantly made trouble in other prisons, or for the people who needed to be in maximum high- security, away from land because they had once escaped before. It was the biggest and strongest prison in all of America. Before the prison became a prison there was a building made in 1850 but it was never used, it wasn’t used for anything. So in 1868 it was used as a prison, but soon it was destroyed and all the prisoners had to rebuild it in 1909. They built the prison on an island because people thought it would be escape proof because of