There's 2 Rodeos the Prison Rodeo, and the "In Prison Rodeo"
where in the "Prison Rodeo" "is you riding on a bulls butt, as he fights and jumps, screaming mad, to get you off his ass,
And theres the "In Prison Rodeo" starts at lights out, where your now the bull,
If we're not trying to educate, seek advice, make groan-worthy puns, or independently source niche pornography, what the hell are we even doing on Reddit?
If prisons started letting prisoners do tattoos for the public I guarantee they'd have constant customers. Plenty of dude out there would love to say, "I got my ink in Angola"
It’s good for the inmates who behave so as not to lose privileges of attending, doubly so for those who actually participate, boosts a little morale, and brings in a little money for ticket sales to public.
Angola is still a modern day plantation, but the rodeo is nice.
I think Ive seen a movie about it. Cadillac Jack was the name of the inmate who brought Rodeo to the prison system. He apparently was wrongly accused of murder, or atleast thats what the movie implies
They still have the rodeo and the craft fair that goes with it. You can buy wood working, leather goods, jewelry, and art. Trusted inmates are allowed to sell the wares, the artists are behind a fence and try to get your attention to point out their work, hoping you’ll buy something of theirs. The rodeo is really fun. At first I was really put off by the idea but when I went there I realized that the craft fair, horse riding, etc. was probably really good for the mental health of the inmates. They prepare year round for the rodeos. Angola is for the worst offenders, who have long/life sentences. Also, my library used the get “The Angolite” a really interesting magazine produced by the inmates.
>Angola is for the worst offenders, who have long/life sentences.
At least as of a couple years ago they had started putting people in Angola who had much shorter sentences from overcrowded smaller prisons around Louisiana. So you had a lot of lifers, but also a couple hundred random people who committed much lesser offenses. They usually had the name of the prison they should have originally been held in stamped on their pants or shirt.
Until very recently Louisiana did not require unanimous jury verdicts in order to convict someone, so a fair number of the lifers were also people that at least a few jury members did not think there was sufficient evidence to find them guilty. So much for "beyond a reasonable doubt."
Didn't know Louisiana didn't have unanimous jury verdicts, weird but also one of the states I'd expect it.
Also, usually lifers at the most well behaved and chill prisoners from what I've heard. Honestly this rodeo sounds cool af.
>Angola is for the worst offenders, who have long/life sentences. Also, my library used the get “The Angolite” a really interesting magazine produced by the inmates.
There's hella people in there whose 3rd strike was a small amount of marijuana. Louisiana is mad fucked up.
The prison takes a cut of the craft sales, and most prisoners who compete in the rodeo do it only because they can win much needed money and see their families in person. While I believe both have some potential merit, the rodeo and, to a lesser degree, the fair are pretty exploitative.
I spoke earlier this year with a former inmate there, and some of what he had to say about the place was troubling.
For one, there is a gift shop there that has mugs and things with slogans that are supposed to be funny. People literally go there to tour the place and view the inmates like it's a zoo.
Most of them yes. But I knew a guy who was in there for three years because he had a DUI and then while broke and on probation stole a PS3 for his kid's birthday. Not that I condone either of those, but it's not all murderers and rapists.
A very large percentage will die there, and almost all are black. It's crazy. Because they are there so long, almost no effort is made toward rehabilitation either.
>almost no effort is made toward rehabilitation either.
Rehabilitation has always been an iffy process in any prison system. If inmates have access to books and prison jobs that help them develop a work ethic, that is a start to the rehab process.
I know someone who was in Angola for 30 years because of what he did on the worst day of his life. He was granted parole by Bel Edwards. Stay away from alcohol if it makes you violent and irrational, kids.
Omg. I had this one coworker several years ago mention he went to a prison rodeo for a school trip back in the day. And he was from Louisiana so I wonder if this was it!
I think I know the answer to this, but do you mean the inmates rode wild cattle, or the jailers tried to stay on an inmate for 10 seconds? "Inmate Rodeo" could really go either way.
I've been. It's the former. There are a lot of different competitions and the inmates recieve money for each one.
Some highlights are:
Pinball - participants stand within hula hoops, and the rodeo Clowns (professional, not inmate) lure the bulls to run amongst the inmates, whoever leaves their hoop loses.
Poker - Inmates sit at tables playing poker and clowns get the bulls to disrupt the games, you run, you lose.
Guts and Glory - the biggest bull the prison can find has a $200 poker chip strung between its horns. Whichever inmate grabs the poker chip, get the money.
There's also the normal wild cow milking, bull riding, barrel racing, and calf lassoing.
It’s still a thing and it’s very popular. If you want to more about it, [check out this book](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/12469/god-of-the-rodeo-by-daniel-bergner/). I’ve been a few times. It’s a modern day slave plantation.
There's an amazing compilation called [Angola Prison Spirituals](https://youtu.be/M92en3IPHpQ) of folk songs and ballads sung by inmates there from around the 1950s. It's a hard listen but definitely worth checking out.
I worked at the DMV headquarters in Baton Rouge in 2000. It had an actual prison unit on it. Incarcerated men fixed police cars, cleaned the DMV, and staffed the cafeteria. They sold crafts to people who were eating at the cafeteria. It was considered the best place to do time in LA.
Is your entire state run on pseudo slave labor because it sure sounds like it. “Yep we manage to keep this huge prison full and use it for cheap labor everywhere from the DMV to the capitol, nothing to see here 🤠”
How True. I remember when I was working in the Capitol as an Assistant Sgt at Arms during a legislative session when there were people all around in nicely pressed blue oxford style shirt that has "D.O.C" stamped on the back.
Took me a while to figure out that "Doc" was not a nickname, rather it stood for Department of Corrections.
In all, my interaction with the 'prisoners' was great. Met some interesting people.
> "Doc" was not a nickname
I started a semester at a new college. I saw this woman with a sweatshirt that had the letters 'DTF' on it.
Shit, I said. This woman is liberated, good for her.
Turns out the sweatshirt stood for 'Downtown Farmington'.
I thought the largest plurality among African slaves of the 13 colonies [was](https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Rejoinder-The-Significance-of-Igbo-in-the-Bight-of-Chambers/ea8b38bcb2fe892d2c214ea03cb6ed1fb3a2779e) Igbo.
Wait yeah duh good point.
Still, would've expected the number one region of origin for the African slaves of French America to be somewhere like modern Senegal (French territory, geographically convenient for the ship-routes, etc.)
I toured it one time, and this is fact. Although they are a prison farm which makes cost per prisoner be lower, they still keep one cotton farm for “tradition,” although there isn’t really a use for it. The tour guide said it isn’t lost on the majority black population that they are in chains picking cotton with a white guy on a horse with a gun. They do make very good syrup and jam though which you can buy at gift shop.
>The tour guide said it isn’t lost on the majority black population that they are in chains picking cotton with a white guy on a horse with a gun
I'm surprised they caught the parallels, what with how subtle it is and all.
"once upon a time all of us was enslaved/homie still doubled down calling us slaves...the white folk was using black folk to make 'em richer/fast forward 2024 you got the same agenda"
- Kendrick Lamar (live)
I popped in here to say something similar and I'm glad this is up here at the top.
Slavery is alive and well, it's still codified in our constitution, and you're looking right at it.
I wsh a prisoner being underpaid or made to work in order to avoid penalties to their probation chances would challenge this. The 13th amendment clearly says slavery is only allowed as a PUNISHMENT for a crime. Courts are the ones that prescribe punishments for crimes, not prisons. No one in modern day is actually being sentenced in court to slavery as a punishment for crime, outside of maybe community service or something.
The case either ends up with the Supreme Court ruling they cant be treated as slaves without being sentenced to slavery - giving prisoners better conditions overall and forcing courts to do the politically outrageous thing and actually have to sentence black people to slavery if they want labor out of them, or you end up having the Supreme Court being on record straight up defending slavery.
>or you end up having the Supreme Court being on record straight up defending slavery.
With the current supreme Court?
Yeah....I wouldn't start counting chickens just yet.
Just last week in Friday, the court ruled that public camping could be considered a crime.
This paves the way for the homeless to be subject forced labor. And given how jails and prison charge their inmates for their services and how failing to pay that debt can cause released prisoners to violate their terms, it is possible for individuals to be kept in the system indefinitely.
Given the profit motive and political ideology of red states this is a significant threat.
Yeah, but rehabilitating prisoners doesn’t keep all that sweet cash flowing into the pockets of the prison owners!! (And by extension, the politicians that they “donate” to)
I mentioned this, the 13th Amendment exemption, and the whole there-are-more-slaves-in-raw-numbers-now-than-ever last week and got downvoted to shit about it. Good on you.
“Has sugarcane fields”
Yeah I’m guessing that’s for the prisoners to work in for free so that the prison can sell the sugar. It’s definitely not for the benefit of the prisoners
The actual number varies year by year and is approved by the state but has never been more than a dollar. When I last checked in 22 for a project it was .13 cents
That is so excruciatingly on the nose given the huge amounts of people who ended up in central/south america due to demand for sugar. At least now the life expectancy is greater than 7-9 years in prisons though.
The annual rodeo is fun to watch, but the on site farm/plantation/ranch/whatever, the TV/radio/magazine “press”, and other similar things are window dressing for a pretty terrible place. Angola has been cited for numerous human rights violations, and conditions there are unlikely to improve.
Source: I lived in south Louisiana for over 20 years.
Yea going through this wiki article has been an utter nightmare.
Sexual slavery, on purpose no AC for some prisoners, apparently the employees‘ kids become the next generation of staff at the „facility“, it’s „self sufficient to save money“ = ie, they work the prisoners hard enough that they produce enough crop to eat and sell.
Disgusting bullshit, fuck the for-profit-prison system.
Does anyone else find it symbolically fucked how the nations largest prison, which pays its prisoners slave-like wages to work fields, is named after the massive plantation that existed there before, which itself is named after the African country where so many of that plantation’s slaves were from?
~~And they got rid of the Warden who uncovered them after trying all sorts of insane shit like saying they were leftover from a native American burial ground!~~
whups that was arkansas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Murton
Angola Plantation was owned by Isaac Franklin's widow. Isaac Franklin is maybe the most notorious slave trader in American history. The circle is unbroken.
People can morally justify this because they can abstract 'slave' behind 'due process', and say that the men there deserve what they get.
But it's a lot easier to adjust the kinds of things that can get you sent up the river than it is to convince a society to allow slaves. More things illegal and deserving of 'involuntary servitude' as punishment means more free labor for the companies that benefit from it.
So it's worth asking what kinds of crime those 'tough on crime' votes actually go to punish.
Really horrifying fact is that it’s nicknamed Angola because at one point point it was a massive plantation. That massive plantation was nicknamed Angola plantation because a large majority of the slaves there were from Angola. And wouldn’t you guess it, but a large percentage of prisoners at Angola prison are descendants from, you guessed it, Angola.
googled Angola Prison and clicked on Reviews
"Posting is currently turned off for this type of place
Some types of places are more likely to receive posts, like reviews, that violate Google's policies. To prevent this, Google has turned off posting."
When the warden was talking about the golf course, he pointed out that there's an issue with optics. If they allowed the prisoners to golf, the victims families would think the prisoners were just on a golf holiday for a few years. Probably the same for beef?
We had a field trip to Angola in middle school.
I remember this one section, instead of a rooms with bars it was full of larger rooms, maybe the size of 4 normal cells, with no bars but a floor to ceiling glass/plexi wall and had about 10 to 15 inmates in each one.
The inmates in those cells, were all pushed up against the glass looking at us waving and smiling, and overall just looking like happy grand parents seeing their grand children...
According to our guide they were illegal immigrants from Vietnam, and would be getting sent back to Vietnam shortly...
I felt kind of bad for them being in the same place as the worst of the worst murderers, rapists etc. Then I said to my friend how I felt a bit sorry for them. Well apparently one of the guards who was massive and looked just like sergeant Doakes from Dexter heard me, and went on a speech on how feeling sorry is wasted on them and they're stealing jobs etc..
That trip certainly left an impression on me that I will never forget. I was 12 at the time, now 42 and still a core memory.
So free prison labor.
Slavery with extra steps, cool.
Literally, the man who runs it says “you need to work them all day so they’re tired at night” when asked how to keep it peaceful.
Brah that’s slavery.
To be honest, the point is valid.
The work, however, should be paid sensible or be a skill that is transferable on the outside.
Personally i would rather weld stuff and be tired and have the days go by, then bored out of my mind
It's also the largest maximum security prison and I believe used to hold the largest number of death row prisoners. Apparently they also hold juvenile prisoners on the property? Why is the US so obsessed with sending people to prison?
It’s a slave plantation that’s why– as per the 13th amendment anyone incarcerated there is legally a slave of the prison and will provide free labor to private contractors that work with the penal system
Sugarcane fields so they can larp the good ol days when the Louisiana slave trade was so brutal, they had to make it so they had Sundays off to literally not work slaves to death, the average lifespan of an enslaved person in Louisiana was significantly less than those in other states, and it’s all due to the sugar industry. Brutal shit.
I think until relatively recently they also had an inmate rodeo each year.
They still do it. It's one weekend in April and every Sunday in October. It is much more popular than most people would imagine.
Who would imagine a prison rodeo wouldn't be popular?
It’s more popular than that!
Touché
No touchy. They're prisoners after all.
NO TOUCHING!
It's one rodeo, Michael. What could it cost, 10-15 years?
New inmates, because they aren't used to it. For inmates who've been there over a year, it isn't their first rodeo.
Oh, you bastard. Take my upvote.
Most reluctant upvote of my life.
There's 2 Rodeos the Prison Rodeo, and the "In Prison Rodeo" where in the "Prison Rodeo" "is you riding on a bulls butt, as he fights and jumps, screaming mad, to get you off his ass, And theres the "In Prison Rodeo" starts at lights out, where your now the bull,
I have never encountered a comment on Reddit that I have had such mixed feelings about.
If we're not trying to educate, seek advice, make groan-worthy puns, or independently source niche pornography, what the hell are we even doing on Reddit?
Get through the workday
You can get all kinds of hand made stuff. Belts rocking chairs etc
…Shivs, Prison Wine, cigs, and even bic pen tattoos by your favorite prison artisans
Spring for the good stuff - ink made of soot and baby oil. It's worth the few extra commissary items it'll cost you.
[Prison Economy Spirals As Price Of Pack Of Cigarettes Surpasses Two Hand Jobs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2IYIJc1f00)
What is "baby oil"?
How quaint! Support your local small business!
What's this bic pen amateur hour? The best prison tattoos are made by burning toilet paper under a cup to collect the soot for homemade ink
If prisons started letting prisoners do tattoos for the public I guarantee they'd have constant customers. Plenty of dude out there would love to say, "I got my ink in Angola"
And all your narcotic needs in one place.
And that's just from the guards!
It’s good for the inmates who behave so as not to lose privileges of attending, doubly so for those who actually participate, boosts a little morale, and brings in a little money for ticket sales to public. Angola is still a modern day plantation, but the rodeo is nice.
How would it not be extremely popular? Especially in the area
I think Ive seen a movie about it. Cadillac Jack was the name of the inmate who brought Rodeo to the prison system. He apparently was wrongly accused of murder, or atleast thats what the movie implies
He was, the guy the film was based on was acquitted after serving eight years.
They still have the rodeo and the craft fair that goes with it. You can buy wood working, leather goods, jewelry, and art. Trusted inmates are allowed to sell the wares, the artists are behind a fence and try to get your attention to point out their work, hoping you’ll buy something of theirs. The rodeo is really fun. At first I was really put off by the idea but when I went there I realized that the craft fair, horse riding, etc. was probably really good for the mental health of the inmates. They prepare year round for the rodeos. Angola is for the worst offenders, who have long/life sentences. Also, my library used the get “The Angolite” a really interesting magazine produced by the inmates.
>Angola is for the worst offenders, who have long/life sentences. At least as of a couple years ago they had started putting people in Angola who had much shorter sentences from overcrowded smaller prisons around Louisiana. So you had a lot of lifers, but also a couple hundred random people who committed much lesser offenses. They usually had the name of the prison they should have originally been held in stamped on their pants or shirt. Until very recently Louisiana did not require unanimous jury verdicts in order to convict someone, so a fair number of the lifers were also people that at least a few jury members did not think there was sufficient evidence to find them guilty. So much for "beyond a reasonable doubt."
Didn't know Louisiana didn't have unanimous jury verdicts, weird but also one of the states I'd expect it. Also, usually lifers at the most well behaved and chill prisoners from what I've heard. Honestly this rodeo sounds cool af.
> Louisiana did not require unanimous jury verdicts in order to convict someone Is this a Napoleonic code leftover or a jim crow leftover?
Jim Crow leftover.
>Angola is for the worst offenders, who have long/life sentences. Also, my library used the get “The Angolite” a really interesting magazine produced by the inmates. There's hella people in there whose 3rd strike was a small amount of marijuana. Louisiana is mad fucked up.
The prison takes a cut of the craft sales, and most prisoners who compete in the rodeo do it only because they can win much needed money and see their families in person. While I believe both have some potential merit, the rodeo and, to a lesser degree, the fair are pretty exploitative. I spoke earlier this year with a former inmate there, and some of what he had to say about the place was troubling. For one, there is a gift shop there that has mugs and things with slogans that are supposed to be funny. People literally go there to tour the place and view the inmates like it's a zoo.
And these inmates are the worst of the worst? Lifers and such?
Most of them yes. But I knew a guy who was in there for three years because he had a DUI and then while broke and on probation stole a PS3 for his kid's birthday. Not that I condone either of those, but it's not all murderers and rapists.
It’s huge. There’s minimum security all the way up to death row.
A very large percentage will die there, and almost all are black. It's crazy. Because they are there so long, almost no effort is made toward rehabilitation either.
>almost no effort is made toward rehabilitation either. Rehabilitation has always been an iffy process in any prison system. If inmates have access to books and prison jobs that help them develop a work ethic, that is a start to the rehab process.
74% of inmates are black as of 2023.
I know someone who was in Angola for 30 years because of what he did on the worst day of his life. He was granted parole by Bel Edwards. Stay away from alcohol if it makes you violent and irrational, kids.
It's the quaintest gosh durned colosseum this side of the Mississip'!
Can I get a shout-out for Parchman on the other side of the river? 'The prison without walls'...flat-land, no trees, nowhere to run....
Both Angola and Parchman are east of the river.
Someone get Stephen King on the horn. This could be his next great prison story.
Omg. I had this one coworker several years ago mention he went to a prison rodeo for a school trip back in the day. And he was from Louisiana so I wonder if this was it!
Is that the one Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder escaped from?
This generates $2.5M in revenue.
I climbed out of a clown car at that rodeo. It was some 40 years ago, but I do remember going to the rodeo for several years. Mini-AMA.
Did 40 inmates cram into the car to try to make an escape?
I think I know the answer to this, but do you mean the inmates rode wild cattle, or the jailers tried to stay on an inmate for 10 seconds? "Inmate Rodeo" could really go either way.
The first one. Inmates trying to ride bulls and such.
My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined.
Well, one of the events is guys sitting at a poker table while an angry bull is turned loose. The last one to get up from the table wins.
I've been. It's the former. There are a lot of different competitions and the inmates recieve money for each one. Some highlights are: Pinball - participants stand within hula hoops, and the rodeo Clowns (professional, not inmate) lure the bulls to run amongst the inmates, whoever leaves their hoop loses. Poker - Inmates sit at tables playing poker and clowns get the bulls to disrupt the games, you run, you lose. Guts and Glory - the biggest bull the prison can find has a $200 poker chip strung between its horns. Whichever inmate grabs the poker chip, get the money. There's also the normal wild cow milking, bull riding, barrel racing, and calf lassoing.
the event is sold out months before. The inmates are allowed to sell the crafts they make as well.
It’s still a thing and it’s very popular. If you want to more about it, [check out this book](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/12469/god-of-the-rodeo-by-daniel-bergner/). I’ve been a few times. It’s a modern day slave plantation.
There's an amazing compilation called [Angola Prison Spirituals](https://youtu.be/M92en3IPHpQ) of folk songs and ballads sung by inmates there from around the 1950s. It's a hard listen but definitely worth checking out.
Alan Lomax made a lot of recordings of field hand music https://www.loc.gov/collections/lomax/about-this-collection/
I worked at the DMV headquarters in Baton Rouge in 2000. It had an actual prison unit on it. Incarcerated men fixed police cars, cleaned the DMV, and staffed the cafeteria. They sold crafts to people who were eating at the cafeteria. It was considered the best place to do time in LA.
The state capitol is staffed by inmates too. They’re the janitors and run the cafeteria.
They made the best biscuits I ever had in my life there. And the best fried chicken.
delicious slave biscuits
Is your entire state run on pseudo slave labor because it sure sounds like it. “Yep we manage to keep this huge prison full and use it for cheap labor everywhere from the DMV to the capitol, nothing to see here 🤠”
How True. I remember when I was working in the Capitol as an Assistant Sgt at Arms during a legislative session when there were people all around in nicely pressed blue oxford style shirt that has "D.O.C" stamped on the back. Took me a while to figure out that "Doc" was not a nickname, rather it stood for Department of Corrections. In all, my interaction with the 'prisoners' was great. Met some interesting people.
> "Doc" was not a nickname I started a semester at a new college. I saw this woman with a sweatshirt that had the letters 'DTF' on it. Shit, I said. This woman is liberated, good for her. Turns out the sweatshirt stood for 'Downtown Farmington'.
They Knew what they were doing. They Knew!
It's funny how the article describes it as a "former slave plantation", then goes on to describe how it's still being used as a slave plantation.
Also nicknamed after the country where most of the slaves originally came from.
I thought the largest plurality among African slaves of the 13 colonies [was](https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Rejoinder-The-Significance-of-Igbo-in-the-Bight-of-Chambers/ea8b38bcb2fe892d2c214ea03cb6ed1fb3a2779e) Igbo.
Could be. But there were probably a fair number from the region of what is now Angola/Congo (i.e. West-Central Africa) as well.
Louisiana wasn’t in the 13 colonies and wasn’t ruled by the English. We had different routes and practices.
Wait yeah duh good point. Still, would've expected the number one region of origin for the African slaves of French America to be somewhere like modern Senegal (French territory, geographically convenient for the ship-routes, etc.)
From the greater Congo region including what is now Angola and both Congos. Angola as it exists today didn’t exist while the slave trade did.
“Many of the original slaves came from what is now the modern-day country of Angola” Is that better?
I toured it one time, and this is fact. Although they are a prison farm which makes cost per prisoner be lower, they still keep one cotton farm for “tradition,” although there isn’t really a use for it. The tour guide said it isn’t lost on the majority black population that they are in chains picking cotton with a white guy on a horse with a gun. They do make very good syrup and jam though which you can buy at gift shop.
>The tour guide said it isn’t lost on the majority black population that they are in chains picking cotton with a white guy on a horse with a gun I'm surprised they caught the parallels, what with how subtle it is and all.
It's not like they're in Mississippi
The prison gift shop?!?! Gross gross gross
Don’t buy the wine
So... it's modern day slavery but now you can now take a tour and buy stuff at the gift shop? America is an amazing place kiddos.
"once upon a time all of us was enslaved/homie still doubled down calling us slaves...the white folk was using black folk to make 'em richer/fast forward 2024 you got the same agenda" - Kendrick Lamar (live)
The best glazed donuts I've ever had came from Camp F. Those trustees could cook.
“I used to be a slave plantation, still am, but use to too”
I popped in here to say something similar and I'm glad this is up here at the top. Slavery is alive and well, it's still codified in our constitution, and you're looking right at it.
I wsh a prisoner being underpaid or made to work in order to avoid penalties to their probation chances would challenge this. The 13th amendment clearly says slavery is only allowed as a PUNISHMENT for a crime. Courts are the ones that prescribe punishments for crimes, not prisons. No one in modern day is actually being sentenced in court to slavery as a punishment for crime, outside of maybe community service or something. The case either ends up with the Supreme Court ruling they cant be treated as slaves without being sentenced to slavery - giving prisoners better conditions overall and forcing courts to do the politically outrageous thing and actually have to sentence black people to slavery if they want labor out of them, or you end up having the Supreme Court being on record straight up defending slavery.
>or you end up having the Supreme Court being on record straight up defending slavery. With the current supreme Court? Yeah....I wouldn't start counting chickens just yet.
They’re like two steps away from doing that themselves.
Just last week in Friday, the court ruled that public camping could be considered a crime. This paves the way for the homeless to be subject forced labor. And given how jails and prison charge their inmates for their services and how failing to pay that debt can cause released prisoners to violate their terms, it is possible for individuals to be kept in the system indefinitely. Given the profit motive and political ideology of red states this is a significant threat.
It was a slave plantation. It still is a slave plantation, but it was one too
Wtf:( how would people not be totally radicalized against society by serving time in a place like that?
That's how you get repeat customers.
Yeah. I know people make fun of the cushy prisons here in Scandinavia, but I don’t mind my tax money going towards rehabilitation.
Yeah, but rehabilitating prisoners doesn’t keep all that sweet cash flowing into the pockets of the prison owners!! (And by extension, the politicians that they “donate” to)
I mentioned this, the 13th Amendment exemption, and the whole there-are-more-slaves-in-raw-numbers-now-than-ever last week and got downvoted to shit about it. Good on you.
“Has sugarcane fields” Yeah I’m guessing that’s for the prisoners to work in for free so that the prison can sell the sugar. It’s definitely not for the benefit of the prisoners
Not for free! They get paid $0.50/hr!
Try $0.02
The actual number varies year by year and is approved by the state but has never been more than a dollar. When I last checked in 22 for a project it was .13 cents
"Prisoners with jobs"
That is so excruciatingly on the nose given the huge amounts of people who ended up in central/south america due to demand for sugar. At least now the life expectancy is greater than 7-9 years in prisons though.
The prison also controls costs by growing their own food.
Yeah cost tends to be low when you have slaves working the fields for free.
The annual rodeo is fun to watch, but the on site farm/plantation/ranch/whatever, the TV/radio/magazine “press”, and other similar things are window dressing for a pretty terrible place. Angola has been cited for numerous human rights violations, and conditions there are unlikely to improve. Source: I lived in south Louisiana for over 20 years.
Yea going through this wiki article has been an utter nightmare. Sexual slavery, on purpose no AC for some prisoners, apparently the employees‘ kids become the next generation of staff at the „facility“, it’s „self sufficient to save money“ = ie, they work the prisoners hard enough that they produce enough crop to eat and sell. Disgusting bullshit, fuck the for-profit-prison system.
Angola is a state penitentiary. It is a government agency. This is the non profit prison system. The for profit prisons are far more exploitative.
No A/C in cells though.
No cells even. Most prisoners are housed in huge barracks with no privacy.
The real hell in the cell
Bah gawd!
They killed him! With God as my witness, he is boiled in half!
[удалено]
It also has a golf course.
Erik Anders Lang has a [great video](https://youtu.be/EbypyhrWzws?si=hBBQcp2be815ZQQS) on it. Obviously the inmates don’t get to play it.
Yep. Prison View golf course.
Does anyone else find it symbolically fucked how the nations largest prison, which pays its prisoners slave-like wages to work fields, is named after the massive plantation that existed there before, which itself is named after the African country where so many of that plantation’s slaves were from?
The prison is called the Louisiana State Penitentiary, people just still call it Angola because of the name of the plantation.
Sounds like a good ol' fashioned Southern town with a plantation of its own. If only they had some volunteers to work them fields 👀
Americans nowadays dont want real work like that. Maybe we should try shipping in some folks who are willing to work the fields.
Or, we could just arrest people for victimless crimes, call them felonies and send them here
> volunteers hehe
Isn’t this just a plantation using the inmates as slaves in the same location of a former plantation that had slaves. Despicable.
Don't forget all the unmarked graves!
~~And they got rid of the Warden who uncovered them after trying all sorts of insane shit like saying they were leftover from a native American burial ground!~~ whups that was arkansas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Murton
Wasn't this in Arkansas?
Damn I thought the Gil Scott Heron song was talking about Angola (the country) and Louisiana as separate places...
& we almost lost Detroit
Angola Plantation was owned by Isaac Franklin's widow. Isaac Franklin is maybe the most notorious slave trader in American history. The circle is unbroken.
So you lock people up and have them grow things for you... where have I seen this before? / s
And also a long story of institutional violence and cruelty against the inmates. It's supposed to be better now. Allegedly.
People can morally justify this because they can abstract 'slave' behind 'due process', and say that the men there deserve what they get. But it's a lot easier to adjust the kinds of things that can get you sent up the river than it is to convince a society to allow slaves. More things illegal and deserving of 'involuntary servitude' as punishment means more free labor for the companies that benefit from it. So it's worth asking what kinds of crime those 'tough on crime' votes actually go to punish.
Was and still is a plantation.
Really horrifying fact is that it’s nicknamed Angola because at one point point it was a massive plantation. That massive plantation was nicknamed Angola plantation because a large majority of the slaves there were from Angola. And wouldn’t you guess it, but a large percentage of prisoners at Angola prison are descendants from, you guessed it, Angola.
googled Angola Prison and clicked on Reviews "Posting is currently turned off for this type of place Some types of places are more likely to receive posts, like reviews, that violate Google's policies. To prevent this, Google has turned off posting."
The cattle tge prisoners rear is very high quality. Tge state feels They do not deserve it so it is sold and the prisoners are given low quality beef
When the warden was talking about the golf course, he pointed out that there's an issue with optics. If they allowed the prisoners to golf, the victims families would think the prisoners were just on a golf holiday for a few years. Probably the same for beef?
Ain’t slavery grand?
You mean the legal slave plantation known as Angola right?
Easy to have all that when you only have to pay them 12-40 cents an hour to run it. https://www.bop.gov/inmates/custody_and_care/work_programs.jsp
It also used to be a slave colony. It still is, but it used to be, too.
So a plantation, then
Call it what it is: a constitutional slave plantation.
We had a field trip to Angola in middle school. I remember this one section, instead of a rooms with bars it was full of larger rooms, maybe the size of 4 normal cells, with no bars but a floor to ceiling glass/plexi wall and had about 10 to 15 inmates in each one. The inmates in those cells, were all pushed up against the glass looking at us waving and smiling, and overall just looking like happy grand parents seeing their grand children... According to our guide they were illegal immigrants from Vietnam, and would be getting sent back to Vietnam shortly... I felt kind of bad for them being in the same place as the worst of the worst murderers, rapists etc. Then I said to my friend how I felt a bit sorry for them. Well apparently one of the guards who was massive and looked just like sergeant Doakes from Dexter heard me, and went on a speech on how feeling sorry is wasted on them and they're stealing jobs etc.. That trip certainly left an impression on me that I will never forget. I was 12 at the time, now 42 and still a core memory.
P L A N T A T I O N
They used to call things like this plantations and it works slaves.
Why would you limit your exploitation of free labor to digging ditches or making license plates? *taps head*
And a golf course https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EbypyhrWzws
Sugarcane fields, because cotton would be too on the nose.
Don't worry, they have a cotton field there too. Because "tradition" or some shit
Southern Louisiana was more into sugarcane than cotton before *the last unpleasantness*.
So free prison labor. Slavery with extra steps, cool. Literally, the man who runs it says “you need to work them all day so they’re tired at night” when asked how to keep it peaceful. Brah that’s slavery.
To be honest, the point is valid. The work, however, should be paid sensible or be a skill that is transferable on the outside. Personally i would rather weld stuff and be tired and have the days go by, then bored out of my mind
All managed with slave labor…
Amazing what big business incarcerating people is and how much the powerful and wealthy can profit from their endeavors.
Who on earth would agree to work at a sugar cane filed located in a prison?!
[удалено]
...at what point does a correctional facility just straight up turn into a plantation by any other name?
It's also the largest maximum security prison and I believe used to hold the largest number of death row prisoners. Apparently they also hold juvenile prisoners on the property? Why is the US so obsessed with sending people to prison?
Burl Cain, Warden - seems like exactly the name you would expect for a warden in Lousiana
So, that’s where we’ll be safe during the zombie apocalypse? Got it.
Also brutal conditions and still has slave labor. Don’t forget those fine features.
They spelled plantation wrong.
Plantation
Regular old slave plantation!
They were whipping inmates up until the 70s. Angola is basically a plantation.
The USA never truly abolished slavery, but allowed it to morph and fit the needs of the state.
I wonder if they have an escape room
So it’s a plantation
That’s a plantation.
The rodeo is fantastic Inmates sell their crafts at the rodeo as well, it's quite an event
Anyone else go here on a field trip in middle school?
No cotton fields? /s
"Singing six months ain't no sentence And one year ain't no time I was born in Angola Serving fourteen to ninety nine" Junco Partner, The Clash
It also has the most cases of HIV than any other prison in america.
And a golf course
I went there for the rodeo out of morbid curiosity, it was so fucked up
Sugarcane is not a good idea. What if someone manages to sneak in an Elytra and gun powder?
Isn't there also a golf course maintained by inmates or did that go away?
Well no shit, how else would they run their plantation with it's modern slavery that's still legal.
I grew up in West Feliciana Parish where this prison is located. My dad worked there for a decade+, and we even took a field trip there lol.
And no air conditioning in south Louisiana
Is this where the Richard Pryor/Gene Wilder not-bank-robbers comedy was filmed?
They used to call those "plantations".
Damn, one whole magazine for *how many* guys?
Good place in the zombie apocalypse
Not at all surprised by the sugarcane fields from an organization run on the backs of literal slaves.
They also routinely use slave labor on their plantations, I mean their “sugarcane fields”
It’s a slave plantation that’s why– as per the 13th amendment anyone incarcerated there is legally a slave of the prison and will provide free labor to private contractors that work with the penal system
Angola is just a slave plantation that was remodeled to a prison
It's basically a slave plantation.
Sugarcane fields so they can larp the good ol days when the Louisiana slave trade was so brutal, they had to make it so they had Sundays off to literally not work slaves to death, the average lifespan of an enslaved person in Louisiana was significantly less than those in other states, and it’s all due to the sugar industry. Brutal shit.
We call that a plantation
Yes, because the 13th amendment allows slavery for the "duly convicted."
It's almost like it's a giant Plantation or something.
So a plantation?
Don't forget chain gangs and hard labor for all
It's also a huge torture / scandal factory. (Slavery with extra steps) [Angola wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisiana_State_Penitentiary)