For 150 years, the Louisiana plantation known as Angola has been worked, toiled over, and broken by the sweat of forced labour. The bloodiest and most dangerous war in American history was fought to stop the use of humans as cattle, people as slaves. Until recently, Angola plantation was known as the bloodiest and most dangerous prison system in America. So yes, circumstances have changed, but I would bet that if you took a picture of the fields of Angola in the mid-1800s, it wouldn't look too different from the fields today.
77% of Louisiana's maximum security state penitentiary is African American. I wonder if some of these boys can trace their lineage back to these very fields? Angola is their prison, their plantation, their ancestry, their heritage, their nation.
This brutal land is covered in the blood, sweat, and tears of African-American slaves. Burl Cain may claim the title of warden and may be bankrolled by the state, but just as in days gone by, he is a plantation owner looking down on his forced labour like cattle, like chattel, like children. Maybe one day the land can be put to rest, can stop bleeding, sweating and crying out the suffering of its slaves.
The preceding paragraphs came out of my Justice Stories class. We've been looking at the writings of American prisoners as well as watching films and learning about prison conditions. We've also looked a little bit at the solitary confinement policy of prisons.
Throwing inmates in "the hole" is not widely considered to be a violation of any rights. But if it truly isn't torture, why was solitary confinement the primary method of breaking the souls of inmates at Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, and other torture strongholds? Humans are meant to be social creatures. It is psychological torture to entirely cut them off from all communication with other humans.
Another policy which we have been examining in a couple of my classes is the death penalty and life without parole. Every time we look at these policies, the question always pops into my head, "Why do we deny the possibility of redemption?" When it comes to theories of punishment, the idea of rehabilitation has largely been discarded in favour of retribution and deterrence. Over the past couple decades, the United States has largely eliminated the education programs within her prisons, despite the fact that education in America is the one proven way of getting people out of poverty and a life of crime.
Furthermore, the people who have the largest stake in punitive policy are cut off from voicing their opinions on punitive policy! Why do we deny ex-convicts the right to vote? We cut these people off from society for years on end, and then deny them an ability to ever life a normal life again. They can't vote. They have little to no education. Very few legitimate employers will hire them. The only landlords which will house them are in very shady places. And then we act surprised at the high recidivism rate. There are so many people which claim that America is a "Christian nation," and yet they deny the very possibility of one of the most basic tenets of the Christian faith: redemption.
Why is it again that I'm pursuing a career in prosecution?
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