"As they passed the rows of houses they saw through the open doors that men were sweeping and dusting and washing dishes, while the women sat around in groups, gossiping and laughing.
"What has happened?" the Scarecrow asked a sad-looking man with a bushy beard, who wore an apron and was wheeling a baby-carriage along the sidewalk.
"Why, we've had a revolution, your Majesty -- as you ought to know very well," replied the man; "and since you went away the women have been running things to suit themselves. I'm glad you have decided to come back and restore order, for doing housework and minding the children is wearing out the strength of every man in the Emerald City."
"Hm!" said the Scarecrow, thoughtfully. "If it is such hard work as you say, how did the women manage it so easily?"
"I really do not know," replied the man, with a deep sigh. "Perhaps the women are made of cast-iron.""
- L. Frank Baum, "The Land of Oz"
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
It's big and it's bad.
The Louisiana State Penitentiary (also known as Angola and "The Farm") is a prison in Louisiana operated by the Louisiana Department of Corrections. The prison is the largest maximum security prison in the United States[citation needed] with 5,000 inmates and 1,800 staff members. It is located on an 18,000 acre property that was previously the Angola and other plantations owned by Isaac Franklin. Angola is surrounded on three sides by the Mississippi River.
The worst of the worst are incarcerated there. 90% of the current inmates will die there, because of life sentences or because they are on death row.
And apparently half of them have come to Christ. The warden is a Christian. And there has been a real turnaround in the population. They have their own radio station and annual rodeo.
In the 1990s, Angola partnered with the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary to offer prisoners the chance to earn accredited bachelor's degrees in ministry.
John Piper went and preached there.
This prison has only murderers, rapists, armed robbers and habitual felons. The average sentence is 88 years, and 90 percent of the inmates will die there. Nevertheless, there is a wonderful move of God going on among the prisoners.
Here's the q & A with the inmates.
These guys know their Bibles and want to learn more. Piper preached against the prosperity gospel when he was there.
Not everyone is complimentary about what is going on there, however.
An inmate’s fate at Angola depends upon how he measures up to the warden’s standards, which are rooted firmly in his personal religious dogma. Cain believes that there is only one path toward rehabilitation, and it runs through Christian redemption. (According to Herman Wallace, Cain has at least once offered to release him from solitary if he renounced his political beliefs and accepted Jesus Christ as his savior.)
“The warden says it takes good food, good medicine, good prayin’ and good playin’ to have a good prison,” an assistant warden told Truthout in 2008, “Angola has all these.” To make sure there is ample opportunity for “good prayin’,” Cain has raised funds to construct 18 Christian chapels on the prison’s grounds. (One of several recent corruption charges against Cain involved shaking down a contractor for a donation to the prison chapel fund.)
Likewise, inmates at Angola can gain access to higher education only by embracing Cain’s brand of Christianity. According to the prison’s own web site, while Angola offers literacy and GED classes and technical training in things like auto mechanics, horticulture, and welding, the only college degree program it offers is in Christian Ministry from the New Orleans Baptist Seminary. Only a few hundred prisoners are admitted to his program.
The American Civil Liberties Union has filed lawsuits challenging some of Angola’s policies as constitutional violations of the prisoners’ freedom of religion; in one statement, the ACLU remarked: “Cain’s job is to be Warden of Angola, not the Chaplain of Angola.” But even some Christians would find Burl Cain’s vision of both human and divine justice unsavory.
A glowing 2008 article in the Baptist Press praised Cain for ”govern[ing] the massive prison on the Mississippi River delta with an iron fist and an even stronger love for Jesus.” The iron fist includes Cain’s determination to keep certain “dangerous” prisoners in permanent lockdown, a condition that many have denouced as torture. Cain also presides over the state’s executions. The Baptist Press article noted Cain’s special dedication to delivering souls from the death chamber into the hands of Christ. When he supervised his first execution as warden, Cain said, “I didn’t share Jesus” with the condemned man, and as he received the lethal injection, “I felt him go to hell as I held his hand.” As Cain tells it, “I decided that night I would never again put someone to death without telling him about his soul and about Jesus.”
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Comments on "Have You Heard About Angola Prison?":
2. jen
- 05/18/2010 7:26 pm CDT
I had heard about this. Our global missions pastor visited Angola with a couple of other guys from our church last year, I think. They came back blown away by the work that is being done with those prisoners, how God is moving in the population, at the ministry that the Christian prisoners are doing.
3. Jonathan W.
- 05/26/2010 6:51 pm CDT
There's a documentary coming out about Angola's three most famous prisoners -- two of whom have spent 37 years in solitary confinement: In the Land of the Free.
Leave a Comment:
No, I had not heard about this....thanks for posting it - this is great.
Hard to believe that some of those questions came from hardened criminals - what a great ministry the warden and his staff have - and I love Piper's demeanor here and the way he related with them.
Note that the "negative" article didn't have a quote from an inmate - could they find a disgruntled inmate to interview? I kind of doubt it. It is exceedingly lame for them to have to play the ACLU card in order to make their point.