The Alcatraz of the South

Inside Angola, the nation's largest maximum security prison

By Michael Dobie | Staff Correspondent

July 18, 2004

Article tools

E-mail

Share
- Digg
- Del.icio.us
- Facebook
- Fark
- Google
- Newsvine
- Reddit
- Yahoo

ANGOLA, La. - The roads are lined with live oaks draped in Spanish moss. Behind them lie antebellum homes and old plantations. Make a left turn off Route 61 and drive down a two-lane road.

"The longest 20 miles you'll ever drive," the motel clerk said.

And there it is: the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, the largest maximum security prison in the United States. Its size is staggering.

The prison covers 18,000 acres and houses 5,108 inmates in six camps, really prisons within a prison. The average sentence is 88 years; 90 percent of the inmates in Angola will die there. Angola officials believe they have the world's largest concentration of true lifers. With 1,800 staff, Angola is the largest employer in a five-parish area.

It is known as the Alcatraz of the South. Located about 60 miles northwest of Baton Rouge, Angola is bordered on three sides by the Mississippi River. The fourth side flanks Tunica Hills, an impenetrable tangle of bushes, brambles, rattlesnakes, cliffs and ravines. Escapes are rare.

Angola has its own farm. Inmates work the fields, producing 4.5 million pounds of vegetables last year. A posse of 13 inmates tends Angola's 2,000 head of cattle. Others fish Lake Killarney for lunch for staff and guests. Eleven inmates attend to the prison's 40 bloodhounds. Another group trains Percherons, draft horses the size of Clydesdales. They pull the hearse at inmate funerals.

There is a concrete plant, as well as a branch of Baptist Theological College where inmates earn degrees in theology or general studies.

"In the '50s, '60s and '70s, this was the bloodiest prison in America," public relations officer Gary Young said. "We've come full circle."

Angola has had two murders in more than seven years and has not had a suicide since 2000.

The phenomenon has not gone unnoticed. Angola hosts 1,000 schoolkids each month and is the most popular tour offered by a steamship company that plies the Mississippi.

Credit generally is given to Angola warden Burl Cain, National Warden of the Year for 2003 and one of the most popular men in Louisiana. Colorful and crafty, Cain is a verbal tsunami who mixes hyperbole with common sense in equal measure.

"It takes four things to run a good prison: Good food, good medicine, good playing, good praying," Cain said. "Let one component fall short, you're going to wreck."

Sports, like the other three components, is abundant at Angola.

The prison offers intramural leagues in tackle football, basketball, volleyball and slo- and fast-pitch softball. Champions play teams from other prisons. Angola's football championship game is called the Crunch Bowl; former NFL coach Bum Phillips attended one game that was taped by NFL Films. The winner plays another prison in the Super Crunch Bowl.

Angola stages an Elderly Olympiad for inmates over 50, holds two tennis tournaments a year, is building a golf course and fields a boxing team.

Recreation supervisor Gary Frank estimates 1,200 inmates participate in intramural leagues. In a recent month, security did 9,000 protection checks for inmates playing intramural sports.

"You're only seeing one thing here, and I can say it in two words. You're seeing moral rehabilitation," Cain said while watching an intramural football game. "This program and all the programs are just part of when you have a moral population."

He motioned toward the field.

"They're like teenagers that want you to come pat them on the head and say they're doing good, and they are," Cain said. "You say, 'You all fine, you all OK,' and that's what they want to hear."

Many Angola officials have athletic backgrounds. One of the prison's dentists is former Heisman Trophy winner Billy Cannon. Frank, who played football and threw the shot at Mississippi State, holds two world records in the World Powerlifting Organization and is the reigning super heavyweight champion. His assistant, Leroy Irvin, played football at Grambling. One of the officers on Death Row, a peculiar-looking man-mountain with a skull tattooed on his bald head, is a former professional wrestler named One Man Gang who once beat Hulk Hogan at Nassau Coliseum. The prison's annual sports banquet has featured as speakers Jim Brown, George Foreman and Doug Williams.

"Sports are huge," Frank said. "We think we have the best program in the country."