This is a place referenced in The Atlantic Monthly by Bernard-Henri Levy’s excellent series retracing the steps of Tocqueville. This former plantation is located on a bend in the Mississippi River just north of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It’s the largest prison in the United States. It holds over five thousand inmates and employs more than fourteen hundred guards.
It’s a prison. It’s always been a prison. When it opened as a sugarcane plantation in 1699, the prisoners came from the African nation of Angola as slaves. Hundreds would die every year.
That’s why today there is an Angola, Louisiana.
Locally they call it The Farm. Having the Mississippi River on three sides makes a natural barrier obviating things like guard towers, but there is plenty of razor wire surrounding the 18,000 acres of lush cropland and perfectly manicured lawns.
Typical of a prison, you can observe how the clustered housing units conform to a design that makes it cheap and easy to observe the residents from a central point in each building.
"Albert described his cell for me: less than three meters square, it has a steel bed platform bolted to one wall with a thin mattress atop it. A small table is bolted to the opposite wall, and the third wall is occupied by a combination toilet and sink. He … has two steel boxes under the bed in which he keeps all of his earthly belongings. He spends 23 hours a day there. Three days a week he is given an hour in the "yard," not much more than a small cage with a dirt floor, where he can exercise alone. The other four days a week, he can use his hour for a shower or to walk along the cramped cellblock." Inside Angola Prison
"By 1973, violence was an everyday part of life at the Farm. Men were attacking each other with double-bladed swords, knives, hatchets, and even homemade shotguns. It was common practice for men to go to sleep at night with thick catalogues and steel plates tied to their stomachs underneath their shirts. Angola was a prison of gang warfare and chaos. Between 1972 and 1975, there were 40 murders and more than 350 serious stabbings in the prison. Throughout the 80s, violence continued with stories of kidnappings, escapes, and slain guards." BootsnAll Travel
In these images you can make out the large oval shaped arena used for the famous annual Angola Prison Rodeo, said to be the longest running prison rodeo in the world. The call it the "Wildest Show in the South".
It started in 1964 solely as entertainment for the correctional officers. Wild, indeed.
It’s very popular in the Baton Rouge region and that’s why the arena you see seats ten thousand fans. Every Sunday in October.
Ninety percent of the men at The Farm are violent offenders, with almost half of them convicted of killing another person. This is a prison reserved for those who have been sentenced to life imprisonment, or death.
Did you know that there is no parole in Louisiana?
The only way out of this prison is to die.
In this image you can see the straight tree-lined road that leads into The Farm.
To the north, the few named streets in town show the start of a very small residential community, presumably for the corrections officers.
Hell on earth.
I’ve watched the rodeo on cable and loved it but only caught it once years ago. I’dd need to look for it.
Peace………….
That was amazing.
I loved the pics and I loved the story with it.
Absolutely fascinating.
Deb
Look, you have some valid issues in your articles. But you hurt your credibility and the credibility of everyone trying to do things about these issues when you exagerate. The picture of big bad aquaculture that is really a mound of dredged mud that will be a new wildlife sanctuary, the leaking oil tanker that is really just muck from tug boat prop wash. I agree that the ISSUES that you discuss are real and important but when you make provably false statements then you throw all of your other statements and arguements in doubt. You decry the arguement of the corporations that “the ends justify the means” but you are not innocent of this yourself. False statements are not justified just because they are made fighting what you preceive is wrong.
“The picture of big bad aquaculture that is really a mound of dredged mud that will be a new wildlife sanctuary, the leaking oil tanker that is really just muck from tug boat prop wash.”
This is not correct.
“You decry the arguement of the corporations that “the ends justify the means” but you are not innocent of this yourself.”
This is just wrong. It’s obvious from your comment that you haven’t read any of the articles on this web site. You’ve fabricated an argument for me, but it’s one I never made.
My means are a website that I put up for people to read for free, write in my spare time, and don’t get paid for.
Corporate means are unlimited and make tremendous profits that are mostly secreted offshore to avoid paying taxes. Corporations serve as private tyrannies, with a structure based on the Prussian Army. They have used tremendous amounts of money stolen from citizens to rewrite the laws and grant themselves rights that far exceed the rights of human beings. Their “ends” are just growth, growth, growth, at any cost, people be damned– much like a tumor.
Now if those two things look the same to you, then you are not really paying attention.
Thanks for looking at the pictures on Sprol!
From the National Prison Hospice Association:
“Last year, nearly three times as many inmates died at Angola as made parole, a figure that also held true for the two previous years a first in the history of Louisiana.”
http://www.npha.org/fixin.html
You should fix your final statement that there is no Parole in Louisiana. It is incorrect. There is parole in both Louisiana and Angola Prison.
Thanks for the correction, kjfitz, since this story is about corrections anyway I struck out the offending words.
hi i was reading yaws arguments or (disagrement) and i just wanted to say i am a correctional officer and both of yaw are right angola is for the worst of the worst and you were also ryt you have a better chance of getting out in a body bag than you do parole but most of these poeple did somthing wrong and diserve what they got i work with men everyday who are locked up for a d.w.i and spend there whole sentence in prison and i c some who rape children and get out in a week this whole system is terribly screwed up so i just wanted to set some stuff straigt and say that yaw were both ryt no harm no foul as i say it yaw have a nice day