When was angola prison founded

The plantation was named Angola, after the homeland of its former slaves. It traced its origins as a prison back to , when inmates were housed in the old slave quarters and worked on the plantation. In those years, a private firm ran the state penitentiary. After news reports of brutality against inmates, the state of Louisiana took control of Angola in Throughout the ensuing decades, Angola State Prison faced numerous problems thanks to its geography and administration.

The penitentiary was bounded on three sides by the Mississippi River. During the Great Depression, the prison facilities fell into poor shape after its budget was cut severely. Conditions became so bad that 31 inmates sliced their Achilles tendons to publicize their objections to hard labor and brutality. In the s, a new governor fulfilled his campaign promise to clean up Angola, renovate the old buildings, and add new camps—as the prison buildings were called.

Louisiana State Penitentiary is located in the state of Louisiana, in the southeastern region of the United States and it is bordered by Mississippi river on three sides. It is the largest maximum-security prison farm in the U. Since Louisiana has the highest incarceration rate of adult prisoners in the U. It is called the "Alcatraz of the South" and simply "The Farm", but the nickname Angola is the most distinguished one and there is a good reason for that.

The Louisiana State Penitentiary is nicknamed the Angola prison because the territory which the prison occupies was a slave plantation in the 19th century and most of the slaves were brought to the U.

This information is not to be taken for granted because there are some indications that Isaac Franklin, an American slave trader and planter, the co-founder of the largest slave trading firm in the United States and the owner of the plantation at the time, named it himself Angola or Angora in In slavery was abolished, but one must pay close attention to the Section 1 of the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution which reads: Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

But, what directly influenced the creation and history of the Angola prison was the Convict leasing system. That was a system which was profitable for both parties, but the convicts which can be understood under some circumstances, but there were orphaned children included, too. The problem was that the state gave total control to the private parties over the convicts and the majority of the convicts were African American. The writer Douglas A. Some southern legislatures passed Black Codes to restrict free movement of blacks and force them into employment with whites.

If convicted of vagrancy, blacks could be imprisoned, and they also received sentences for a variety of petty offenses. States began to lease convict labor to the plantations and other facilities seeking labor, as the freedmen were trying to withdraw and work for themselves. In the building was restored to by inmates and opened for public tours. Warden Cain has come under fire from the American Civil Liberties Union since due to charges of religious discrimination at the prison.

Three inmates—a Mormon, a Catholic, and a Muslim—filed separate suits alleging that Cain or other officials interfered with their ability to practice their faiths. Near the end of his tenure as warden in , C. Warden C. Rideau transformed The Angolite into an award-winning magazine, garnering some of the highest accolades in journalism. Rideau was freed in , and in his memoir asserted that when Cain became warden, he first tried to induce Rideau to inform on other prisoners and then unsuccessfully evangelized him.

The Angola Prison Rodeo started in for inmate recreation. Two years later, it was opened to the public, but only a small audience was allowed to attend. In a new stadium was constructed to accommodate 7, spectators. Bergner, Daniel. New York: Crown Publishers, Carleton, Mark T. Hawkins, Richard, and Geoffrey P.

American Prison Systems: Punishment and Justice. Rousey, Dennis C. Policing the Southern City: New Orleans, — Wurtzburg, Susan. Subscription Give as a Gift. Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola Founded in the early nineteenth century during a time of radical penal reformation, the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola is one of the nation's largest prisons.