| Former editors | Wilbert Rideau (original co editor 1975-1987, associate editor 1997-2005) |
|---|---|
| Frequency | Bimonthly |
| Founded | 1976 |
| Company | Louisiana State Penitentiary |
| Country | United States |
| Based in | Angola, Louisiana |
| Language | English |
| ISSN | 0402-4249 |
The Angolite is the inmate-edited and published prison magazine of the Louisiana State Penitentiary (Angola) in West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana.
As with the rest of the prison, The Angolite was segregated; originally only white prisoners, a minority at the facility, were allowed to work on it. Under federal court-ordered reforms, including desegregation of work assignments and programs, the prison warden picked Wilbert Rideau as editor in 1975. He was the first African-American editor of any prison newspaper in the United States. This choice was ratified in 1976 by a new prison warden. [1] In 2009, the magazine published six issues annually. [2] Louisiana prison officials believed that an independently edited publication would help the prison.
The Angolite gained a national reputation for reporting. It won international awards under prisoner co-editors Rideau and Billy Sinclair; [3] Sinclair joined as co-editor in 1978. [4] The magazine won the George Polk Award in 1979, for the articles "The Other Side of Murder" and "Prison: a Sexual Jungle". [5] [6] [7]
The magazine won the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award and the American Bar Association's Silver Gavel Award. [5] The Angolite was the first prison publication ever to be nominated for a National Magazine Award, for which it was nominated seven times by early 1993. [8] In 1993 the Columbia Journalism Review referred to Rideau and Sinclair as "the Woodward and Bernstein of prison journalism." [9]
In 1987 Sinclair disclosed that he had been cooperating with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in their investigation at the prison of a pardons-for-sale scheme. Eventually the state indicted the head of the pardons board, an appointee of Governor Edwin Edwards. No federal or state charges were made against Edwards. The New York Times said, "But news of Mr. Sinclair's role shattered The Angolite's credibility. Mr. Sinclair, now a snitch, has been transferred out of the prison for his own safety, leaving Mr. Rideau to confront skeptical readers and sources." [3]
Federal authorities feared that Sinclair could be murdered in Angola. Jason Berry of The New York Times reported that "Sinclair became a pariah in the highly politicized prison system" and that he had "a bitter falling out with Rideau." [10] Sinclair was moved by authorities to highly secure quarters within the Louisiana State Police Barracks, [11] and later, the N-5 Special Management Unit cell block in the David Wade Correctional Center, for his protection. In 1987 Rideau said that he felt "betrayed" by Sinclair's actions and that The Angolite's credibility suffered with its readers. Sinclair said that a journalist agency in a prison could not operate like one in the free world. [12]
In 1989, Sinclair filed a $100,000 federal lawsuit against Rideau, in an argument about authorship. [13] Rideau had edited The Wall Is Strong: Corrections in Louisiana, " a compilation of magazine and newspaper articles, and papers from the Center for Criminal Justice Research of University of Southwestern Louisiana the university. About half the newspaper articles were from The Angolite. Sinclair said that four of the articles used in the book should have credited him in the bylines, and he accused Rideau of plagiarism. [14] Sinclair also named as defendants Burk Foster, an LSU criminal justice professor; Hilton Butler, a former warden of LSP; and Roger Thomas, a former assistant warden at LSP. In 1991 Frank Polozola, the U.S. district judge, dismissed Sinclair's suit, because Sinclair had never obtained a copyright for the articles. [15]
In 1988 Ron Gene Wikberg became associate editor on the magazine. He and Rideau collaborated on editing some compilations of articles and stories from the magazine. In 1991 they worked on a textbook, The Wall Is Strong: Corrections in Louisiana (1991). It was a compilation of magazine and newspaper articles, and papers from the Center for Criminal Justice Research of University of Southwestern Louisiana. Together they edited and published Life Sentences in 1992 (now out of print), articles and stories drawn from The Angolite. Wikberg was paroled in 1992. [16]
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In 2007 The Angolite received the 11th annual Thurgood Marshall Journalism Award for Print Journalism, for its record of journalism. [17]
In Angola in the early 21st century, some prisoners argue that the prison administration uses the magazine for propaganda. Scholar Kalen Mary Ann Churcher of Pennsylvania State University described it in 2008 as "a pseudo-pacifier for a select group of men who 'sold out' to the state and now get to walk through a few more doors unsupervised." [18]
In 2010 Rideau said that even during the period when he was still incarcerated, the LSP administration under Burl Cain began "clamping down" on the newspaper. He was released in 2005 after a new trial in which he was convicted on lesser charges, for which he had served twice the maximum sentence. About the current magazine, he said,
If you pick up the magazine now, there's no controversy, there's no criticism of the administration or anything that's going on in the prison. There's a whole lot about sports and religion. They'll write about issues, but not about practices. Mostly it's about religion. [19]
Wilbert Rideau is an American convicted killer and former death row inmate from Lake Charles, Louisiana, who became an author and award-winning journalist while held for 44 years at Angola Prison. Rideau was convicted in 1961 of first-degree murder of Julia Ferguson in the course of a bank robbery that year, and sentenced to death. He was held in solitary confinement on death row, pending execution. After the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that states had to rework their death penalty statutes because of constitutional concerns, the Louisiana Court judicially amended his sentence in 1972 to life in prison.
The Louisiana State Penitentiary is a maximum-security prison farm in Louisiana operated by the Louisiana Department of Public Safety & Corrections. It is named "Angola" after the former slave plantation that occupied this territory. The plantation was named after the country of Angola from which many slaves originated before arriving in Louisiana.
Brubaker is a 1980 American prison drama film directed by Stuart Rosenberg. It stars Robert Redford as a newly arrived prison warden, Henry Brubaker, who attempts to clean up a corrupt and violent penal system. The screenplay by W. D. Richter is a fictionalized version of the 1969 book, Accomplices to the Crime: The Arkansas Prison Scandal by Tom Murton and Joe Hyams, detailing Murton's uncovering of the 1967 prison scandal.
William C. Holman Correctional Facility is an Alabama Department of Corrections prison located in Atmore, Alabama. The facility is along Alabama State Highway 21, 9 miles (14 km) north of Atmore in southern Alabama.
Nathan Burl Cain is the commissioner of the Mississippi Department of Corrections and the former warden at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola in West Feliciana Parish, north of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He worked there for twenty-one years, from January 1995 until his resignation in 2016.
John P. Whitley is a former Louisiana corrections officer who served as the warden of Louisiana State Penitentiary, the largest maximum-security in the United States, from 1990 to 1995. Time magazine credited Warden Whitley with turning around hopelessness and violence at Angola with "little more than his sense of decency and fairness."
The Department of Public Safety and Corrections (DPS&C) is a state law enforcement agency responsible for the incarceration of inmates and management of facilities at state prisons within the state of Louisiana. The agency is headquartered in Baton Rouge. The agency comprises two major areas: Public Safety Services and Corrections Services. The secretary, who is appointed by the governor of Louisiana, serves as the department's chief executive officer. The Corrections Services deputy secretary, undersecretary, and assistant secretaries for the Office of Adult Services and the Office of Youth Development report directly to the secretary. Headquarters administration consists of centralized divisions that support the management and operations of the adult and juvenile institutions, adult and juvenile probation and parole district offices, and all other services provided by the department.
Jonathan David Stack is an American documentary filmmaker. He is also a co-founder of World Vasectomy Day.
The Farm: Angola, USA is a 1998 award-winning documentary set in the notorious and largest American maximum-security prison, Louisiana State Penitentiary, known as Angola. Loosely based on articles published in Life Sentences, drawn from the prison magazine, The Angolite, the film was directed and produced by Jonathan Stack and Liz Garbus. Wilbert Rideau, a life prisoner who had been editor of the magazine since 1975, also participated in direction and was credited on the film.
Death row, also known as condemned row, is a place in a prison that houses inmates awaiting execution after being convicted of a capital crime and sentenced to death. The term is also used figuratively to describe the state of awaiting execution, even in places where no special facility or separate unit for condemned inmates exists. In the United States, after an individual is found guilty of a capital offense in states where execution is a legal penalty, the judge will give the jury the option of imposing a death sentence or life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. It is then up to the jury to decide whether to give the death sentence; this usually has to be a unanimous decision. If the jury agrees on death, the defendant will remain on death row during appeal and habeas corpus procedures, which may continue for several decades.
Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women (LCIW) is a prison for women with its permanent pre-2016 facility located in St. Gabriel, Louisiana. It is the only female correctional facility of the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections. Elayn Hunt Correctional Center is immediately west of LCIW. LCIW includes the state's female death row. As of 2017 the prison has temporarily moved due to flooding that occurred in August 2016, and its prisoners are housed in other prisons. The administration is temporarily located in the former Jetson Youth Center near Baker. By 2021 the Baker area address was given for the prison on the LCIW website.
Dixon Correctional Institute (DCI) is a prison facility in Jackson, Louisiana. DCI, a facility of the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections, is approximately 30 miles (48 km) from Baton Rouge. Dixon is located about 34 miles (55 km) from the Louisiana State Penitentiary (Angola).
The Angola Prison Rodeo, staged at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, is the longest running prison rodeo in the United States.
David Wade Correctional Center (DWCC) is a Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections prison located in an unincorporated area of Claiborne Parish, between Homer and Haynesville, Louisiana. The prison is located near the Louisiana-Arkansas border.
Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility (TCCF) is a private prison for men, authorized by the Tallahatchie County Correctional Authority and operated by CoreCivic, formerly the Corrections Corporation of America on behalf of the Mississippi Department of Corrections. The maximum-security facility is located in unincorporated Tallahatchie County, Mississippi, near Tutwiler in the Mississippi Delta. Since its opening with 352 prisoners, the prison has expanded capacity nearly ninefold, holding 2672 inmates by October 2008. It has housed inmates from Wisconsin, Colorado, Hawaii, Wyoming, Vermont, and California, in addition to prisoners from Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi. In 2010 the facility served as a county jail and also housed more than 1,000 prisoners from California. Since 2013, it has not held Mississippi state prisoners.
Billy Wayne Sinclair is a former prisoner at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, convicted of first-degree murder and originally sentenced to death. His sentence was commuted to life in 1972. He became a notable journalist, known from 1978 for co-editing The Angolite with Wilbert Rideau; together they won some national journalism awards at the magazine, and were nominated for others. It published articles written by inmates at the prison.
C. Paul Phelps Correctional Center (PCC) was a Louisiana Department of Public Safety & Corrections prison for men, located in unincorporated Beauregard Parish, Louisiana, about 3 miles (4.8 km) north of DeQuincy and 30 miles (48 km) northwest of Lake Charles. The center was located on Louisiana Highway 27. It had a capacity of 942 prisoners and was a medium security facility.
The Red Hat Cell Block is a former prison housing unit of the Louisiana State Penitentiary in West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana which, for a time, also contained the state's execution chamber and electric chair.
Prison newspapers are newspapers created within a prison, typically by the inmates.
