The June 1962 attempt came at a moment when Alcatraz was already under institutional strain. The island’s maintenance costs were extraordinary: running a prison in the middle of San Francisco Bay, requiring fresh water to be shipped in and waste to be shipped out, keeping the facilities functional against constant salt air corrosion. The cost per prisoner at Alcatraz was approximately $10 per day — roughly three times the cost at comparable mainland institutions. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy had already begun planning the institution’s closure. On March 21, 1963, the last prisoners were transferred and Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary closed.
The island now operates as a National Historic Landmark managed by the National Park Service, receiving approximately 1.5 million visitors per year. The escape is one of the central attractions of the site’s historical interpretation. The cells of Morris and the Anglin brothers are preserved. Visitors can examine the reproduced vent openings, the utility corridor, the route to the roof. The original dummy heads — or the FBI’s 3D-printed replicas — are presented as the physical artifacts that most concretely illustrate what the escape required.
The 1979 film *Escape from Alcatraz*, directed by Don Siegel and starring Clint Eastwood as Frank Morris, presented a dramatized account that cemented the story in popular culture. The film’s portrayal of events differs from the documented record in ways typical of dramatic adaptation — dialogue, character, chronology — and the movie props created for it have been displayed alongside actual evidence at the Alcatraz museum, which creates potential confusion about which objects are artifacts and which are reproductions.