Louisiana State Penitentiary - History

History

Before 1835, state inmates lived in a jail in New Orleans. The first Louisiana State Penitentiary, located at the intersection of 6th Street and Laurel Street in Baton Rouge, was modeled on a prison in Wethersfield, Connecticut. 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 from Francis Routh during the 1830s with the profits from his slave trading firm, Franklin and Armfield, of Alexandria, Virginia and Natchez, Mississippi as four contiguous plantations. These plantations, Panola, Belle View, Killarney and Angola, were joined during their sale by Franklin's widow, Adelicia Cheatham, to James in 1880. The plantation, named after the area in Africa where the former slaves came from, contained a building called the Old Slave Quarters. Major Samuel James ran the plantation using convicts leased from the state, which led to a great deal of abuse. James died in 1894. The Louisiana Department of Public Safety & Corrections states that the facility opened as a prison in 1901.

Charles Wolfe and Kip Lornell, authors of The Life and Legend of Leadbelly, 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 were being sent to Angola. Around that year, white-black racial tensions existed and each year one in every ten inmates received stab wounds . Wolfe and Lornell said that the staff, consisting of 90 people, "ran the prison like it was a private fiefdom." The two authors said that prisoners were viewed as "'niggers' of the lowest order." The state did not appropriate many funds for the operation of Angola, as the state saved money by trying to decrease costs. Much of the remaining money ended up in the operations of other state projects; Wolfe and Lornell said that the re-appropriation of funds occurred "mysteriously."

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 1948 Governor of Louisiana Earl Long converted the position of warden of Louisiana State Penitentiary into a political patronage position. Long appointed distant relatives as wardens of the prison. In the institution's history, the electric chair, Gruesome Gertie, was stored at Angola; the state transported the chair to the parish of conviction of a condemned prisoner before executing him or her.

A former Angola prisoner, William Sadler (also called "Wooden Ear" because of hearing loss he suffered after a prison attack), wrote a series of articles about Angola entitled "Hell on Angola" in the 1940s which helped cause prison reform.

In 1952, 31 inmates, in protest of the prison's conditions, cut their Achilles' tendons (referred to as the Heel String Gang.) This caused national news agencies to write stories about Angola. In its November 22, 1952 issue, Collier's Magazine referred to Angola as "the worst prison in America."

In 1961 female inmates were moved to the newly-opened Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women.

In 1971 the American Bar Association criticized the state of Angola. Linda Ashton of the Associated Press said that the bar association described Angola's conditions as "medieval, squalid and horrifying." In 1972, Elayne Hunt, a reforming director of corrections, was appointed by Governor Edwin Edwards, and the U.S. courts in Gates v. Collier ordered Louisiana to clean up Angola once and for all, ending the Trustee-guard and Trusty systems. In 1975 U.S. District Judge Frank Polozola of Baton Rouge, Louisiana declared conditions at Angola to be in a state of emergency. The state installed Ross Maggio as the warden; prisoners nicknamed Maggio "the gangster" because he strictly adhered to rules. Ashton said that by most accounts Maggio successfully improved conditions. Maggio retired in 1984.

In the 1980s Kirksey McCord Nix Jr. perpetrated the "Angola Lonely Hearts" scam from within the prison.

On June 21, 1989, Polozola declared a new state of emergency at LSP.

In 1993 LSP guards fatally shot 29-year old escapee Tyrone Brown.

In 1999 six inmates who were serving life sentences for murder took three prison guards hostage in Camp D. The hostage takers bludgeoned and fatally stabbed 29-year old guard Captain David Knapps. Armed guards ended the rebellion by shooting the inmates, killing one, 26-year old Joel Durham, and seriously wounding another.

In Stephen King's book The Green Mile and the adapted movie The Green Mile, the fictional setting of the Louisiana Cold Mountain Penitentiary was loosely based on life on death row at Angola in the 1930s.

In 2004 Paul Harris of The Guardian said "Unsurprisingly, Angola has always been famed for brutality, riots, escape and murder."

On August 31, 2008, New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin stated in a press conference that any New Orleans residents found looting during the evacuation of the city due to Hurricane Gustav would be arrested and immediately transported to Angola prison.

In 2009, the prison reduced its budget by $12 million by "double bunking" (installing bunk beds to increase the capacity of dormitories), reducing overtime, and replacing prison guards with security cameras.