No More Victims, and No One Dies Alone

Wednesday, our second day at Louisiana’s Angola State Prison, started off with breakfast with the larger-than-life Burl Cain – Angola’s charismatic and transformative warden.  Thereafter, we visited the prison’s vocational training centers that are set up to help the prisoners acquire a skill while incarcerated.  These include auto mechanics, auto collision repair, small engine repair (lawnmowers, engines, power tools, etc.), horticulture, eye glass manufacturing, and HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning).  The instructors are lifers with no possibility of parole.  Their students, however, include many serving shorter sentences who have been relocated to Angola so they can be trained by the lifers, most of whom have graduated from the theological seminary.  The training is so comprehensive and effective that there are more certified auto mechanics trained at Angola each year (98% passage rate) than anywhere else in Louisiana.

These lifer/teachers derive tremendous satisfaction knowing that despite their exceptionally poor choices that earned them life in prison, they have the opportunity to shape and equip others to enable them to avoid making the same bad choices after they get out.  The motto for the moral rehabilitation program is “No More Victims.”

I had to get out my hanky more than once as the head teacher in the small engine shop (who is also a Baptist minister leading his own congregation inside Angola) explained that while they cannot change their past, they do control their future.  “We help shape the men here into the kinds of fathers, brothers, sons, and husbands that we should have been.  Nothing gives us more joy than when we hear back from former students who are now living productive lives on the outside.”

In the HVAC class, the students had all kinds of questions for our Ugandan guests about life in Uganda, both inside and outside prison.  We also had a chance to visit the school where students are catching up on the basic education many of them missed out on before they were convicted.  We also stopped at the hospice care facility in the hospital/dentistry area.  Because “life means life” in Louisiana, there is a steady flow of inmates dying in prison.  The vast majority of care takers are fellow prisoners.  As the end approaches, six prisoner volunteers attach themselves to each dying inmate and serve round-the-clock, four-hour shifts, taking turns sitting, reading, and praying with the patient until he passes – “No one dies alone.”

A few days later, the inmates, guards, family, and friends are treated to a dignified service run by the inmate pastors.  The patient is buried in a beautiful, prisoner-made coffin that is brought to the outdoor funeral grounds in an ornate horse-drawn carriage.

Funeral Carriage

And these aren’t just any horses.  The prison has more than a dozen war horses (Percherons) – the biggest I have ever seen.  They are groomed and maintained by several highly trained inmates for this very purpose.

Funeral Horses (and this prisoner was 6’8″ — at least as far as you know)

The inmate carriage driver wears a tuxedo.

I can imagine right about now how one might question why so much effort and resources go toward giving the worst of the worst offenders many opportunities that those outside don’t have.  I will confess to coming into Angola with these questions.  I left Angola with none of them.

I am not a softy on crime, by any stretch, but if we truly believe in redemption (and I certainly do), then simply giving up on someone can’t be the right answer.  Moreover, the results achieved by Warden Cain and his innovative and dedicated staff simply can’t be refuted.  Incidentally, Angola receives a constant flow of prison officials from around the country (and around the world, including us Ugandans) who are starting to adopt some of the practices in other prisons.

The other important response to the resource question is that the prison raises vast amounts of money to pay for many of its programs through its semi-annual rodeo events.  Every Sunday in October and one weekend in April, the prison puts on a rodeo.  All participants are prisoners and the 6,000-seat arena is sold out every day.

Angola Rodeo Arena

Outside the arena in the carnival area, the prisoners are allowed to sell the arts and crafts they make year-round, using their own money for the supplies.  The proceeds of the rodeo allow much of what is innovative about Angola to be paid for by non-taxpayer dollars.  Accordingly, the Angola budget is not proportionately larger than other similar prisons.

Before we left Angola, we visited the rodeo and carnival grounds, and even did a little bareback horse riding ourselves.  I was able to stay on my mount for almost fifteen seconds.

Our own private Rodeo

Because Wednesday was employee-appreciation day, and because crawfish are now in season (who knew there was a crawfish season?), we were invited to sample Louisiana’s fifth food group at the Crawfish Boil.  I have never seen so many crawfish, and I have never seen human beings eat so many of them.

Louisiana’s Fifth Food Group

Most of our Ugandan friends developed a case of the heebee geebies at the thought of eating such ugly and unfamiliar creatures.  This, from folks who devour fried grasshoppers like they are McDonald’s fries.  Go figure.

I felt bad that my research assistant Luke (Pepperdine ambassador and host extraordinaire) had to miss out on the second half of the day, but he had important retrieval work to do.  The night before, he and I had trekked forty minutes to the Baton Rouge airport to pick up another rental car so I could stay with the group at Angola on Wednesday while Luke drove the three hours back to New Orleans to pick up the three whose visas had been tardily issued back in Uganda.  But when the flight landed, there were only two.  The third had been turned away at the ticket counter at the Entebbe Airport before takeoff due to a ticketing snafu.  After some frantic searching and tracking, Luke was able to ascertain the lost sheep would be landing at just before midnight on a different airline.  She was quite relieved to find someone there waiting for her.

The next morning, I checked out of the wonderful and charming Bed and Breakfast where I and two of my Ugandan colleagues had stayed in neighboring St. Francisville.  The owners of The Barrow House Inn, Shirley and Chris, took such good care of us.  And the night before I left, I was humbled to learn that after reading online about the connection between Pepperdine and the Uganda justice system, they were moved to contribute a portion of what we spent on lodging toward the completion of the documentary.  Incidentally, there are new clips of the film-in-progress up on the crowdfunding site.

Later Thursday morning, our group of seven (I retrieved the other five from Angola) met up with Luke’s group of three at Louisiana’s main women’s prison, which houses 900, 140 of which are lifers.  I had no pre-conceived notions about what it would be like at a women’s prison because I don’t watch the wildly popular Netflix show “Orange is the New Black” – at least as far as you know.  Being at Angola and at the women’s prison raised up an impulse in me to buy stock in razor wire manufacturers.

Razor wire as far as the eye could see

While they certainly do good and important work there, we had been spoiled by what we had seen at Angola.  The warden of the women’s prison in our group left with many ideas about how to better manage her population of approximately 100 female inmates, though she lamented the relative lack of resources she had at her disposal.

In the afternoon, we met with the Governor-appointed Secretary of Corrections for the State of Louisiana, thanks to Judge Bob Downing’s good efforts.

Meeting at the Department of Corrections Headquarters

This meeting was quite informative and interesting – who knew Louisiana has the highest incarceration rate of any jurisdiction in the world?  Not I.  Incidentally, Louisiana laments, rather than celebrates, this statistic.

Before turning in on Thursday evening, we returned for nearly two hours of Wal-Mart shopping.  It was supposed to be one hour, but the oft-repeated Ugandan saying rings true – “In America, you have all the watches.  In Uganda, we have all the time.”

My next post will describe a highly informative day at Louisiana State Court and at the Federal Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.