Angola 03/12/2015

Angola is the nickname for the Louisiana State Penitentiary, also known as the “Alcatraz of the South” and “The Farm” is a prison in Louisiana operated by the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections. Angola is the largest maximum security prison in all the United States. They are able to house 6,300 offenders and have a staff of 1,800. It is located on an 18,000 acre property that was previously the Angola and other plantations directly adjacent from the Mississippi state line. The prison is located at the end of Louisiana Highway 66. Since 1995 Burl Cain has been the warden. Death row for men and the state execution chamber for both sexes are located at the Angola facility. Angola was built in 1835. In 1844 the state leased the prison and its prisoners to McHatton Pratt and Company, a private company. Union soldiers occupied the prison during the Civil War. In 1869 Samuel Lawrence James, a former confederate major, received the lease to the prison. The land that has become Angola Penitentiary was purchased by Isaac Franklin. The Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections states the facility opened as a prison in 1901. Charles Wolfe and Kip Lornell, said that Angola was probably as close to slavery as any person could come in 1930. Hardened criminals broke down upon being notified that they sent to Angola. Around that time of year one in every 10 inmates received stab wounds. Wolfe and Lornell said that the staff, consisting of 90 people, ran the prison like it was a private fiefdom. In 1935 remains of a Native American individual were taken from Angola. They were donated to the Louisiana State University Museum of Natural Science. In 1952, 31 inmates in protest of the prisons conditions, cut their Achilles tendons. This caused national new agencies to write stories about Angola. In its November 22,