Angola

Prison

Angola sits on some of the most fertile land in the southern United States, about 60 miles north of the small city of Baton Rouge. After the Civil War the land was bought by Major James. Prisoners were moved from cramped jails in the city of Baton Rouge, to shacks in the country, the old slave quarters of the plantation. Some of the first guards at Angola were former Confederate soldiers. The fate of most prisoners was death within a few years from beatings or starvation. For thirty years convicts were "leased" out to local farmers and forced to work in the fields by Major James.

After some newspapers began giving a voice to the horrors that were occurring at Angola because of the lease system, the corrections system took it back under their control in 1901. The prison was soon built on the land of the Angola farm and inmate beatings were halted. When a new warden came along, so did the dark period of Angola.. Henry Fuqua, in 1941, fired most of the security guards and hired on trusty inmates to run the prison. Angola just continued to fail as a proper rehabilitation center. Inmates were violent with each other, inmate trustees had to keep their jobs for fear they might be killed by the mass population. After many floods devastated the local economy of agriculture Fuqua was able to buy up to 10,000 acres. Inmates were forced to work the fields for no money. Angola won it's title of the most violent prison in the south be 1962.

In the 1970's Angola underwent massive reform. Inmates were paid for work. The Trusty guard system was thrown out and security guards were put into the prison, better regulating the violence, which dropped 72% in just a matter of years. Because of the reforms Angola was granted accreditation in 1994, finally throwing off it's theme of violence. It now employs up to 1800 guards and staff.

Inmates still live a jaded life. Most of the population coming from just 10 urban parishes in Louisiana, proving the point that socio-economic status plays a key role in prosecution. Two-thirds of the prison population are repeat offenders and more then half the population has a life sentence. They are expected to work in the fields and get paid 4 cents an hour to do so. 2 cents of that automatically goes into a private savings plan for all inmates to use when they are released, of course most never are.

Warden Burl Cain has had one of the most controversial terms as a warden at Angola. He emanates a sincere wish for prisoners to be rehabilitated and be able to be freed, but some of his actions have been more then questionable. Sadly in Daniel Berger's book God of the Rodeo, the freelance writer came to the conclusion that Burl Cain was extorting the labor of his inmates through deals with company's, and taking much fame from programs instilled before his term, things like the Angolite, a inmate run magazine, and the Toy Shop, which produces thousands of toys to give to children's charities. He claimed these as his own and used the publicity to further his power over not only inmates but staff as well. There is still a trusty position in the prison, many lifers assume these positions, but they are not there to guard other prisoners, they help integrate new prisoners and form clubs. The CPR team of Angola is comprised of inmates who visit state centers and teach people to perform first aid on patients. These are just a part of an elite of prisoners.

Angola has many camps, or prisons within the prison. In the camps inmates can be partitioned into dorms, with no closed in toilet and 40 men in one room, with only a bed to call their own; or into two man cells. Some of the worst prisoners are kept in Camp J, an almost solitary confinement where inmates can only hear each other and never see other inmates.

Angola is infamous for it's plantation style way of running itself. While the prison itself seems to instigate rehabilitation for the prisoners, Louisiana's system of prosecution does not allow them back into society. The inmates are mostly poor, African American men with no formal education. They have to teach themselves the appeals laws because of bad legal representation given to them by the state. But the inmates continue to survive and press for appeals and lessening of sentences. To search for freedom, a freedom that may never be theirs, that sometimes almost seems to be pulled just out of reach.

Bibliography

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