“Seven Seatbelts for Angola”

At 3 p.m. on August 9, 2010, the Cycling for Change contingent arrived for our tour of the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. We exchanged bicycles for a school bus. Our group was augmented by representatives of Catholic Charities of Baton Rouge, the bus driver (Mr. Washington), and Brad the prison chaplain.

It is 100 degrees outside. Factor in the humidity and that number exceeds 110. The sun is relentless, coating its unshaded victims like molten glass. Our bus briefly stops under a corrugated canopy, and after a guard takes a headcount and examines our picture ID’s the gate opens and the creaks of the bus undercarriage announce that we are proceeding onto the prison grounds.

Angola is unlike any other prison. It was created from 3 former antebellum plantations and encompasses 18,000 acres, roughly the size of New York’s Manhattan Island. The Mississippi River, which is nearing the end of its 2,500 mile journey, forms an imposing natural barrier on three sides of Angola. The fourth side lacks a perimeter fence as the dense mosquito infested swamp is considered an adequate deterrent to escape attempts. Brad comments that the last fellow to try his hand at “the swamp” emerged to surrender himself after 5 days, nearly eaten alive by the bugs.

There are no imposing walls, and no medieval looking stone structures. Located here and there in Angola are razor wire enclosed “camps”. These are self contained penal complexes of varying size, each one holding a portion of the total inmate population. Brad tells us that there are just under 5,000 offenders, and then corrects himself stating that with the addition of the newest camp the number has grown to nearly 5,200. Camps are designated by letter… Camp “A”, Camp “B”, and so on. We learn that Camp “J” is the discipline Camp… a jail within the Prison, housing around 600 offenders who present special problems and risks. That is really significant since 98% of the entire offender population of Angola will ultimately die in Angola.

If Louisiana’s prison needs grow, it is a simple matter to build additional camps at Angola. The spacious grounds look vacant, each camp appearing as a distant community separated by flat expanses of farmland. Angola is in fact one of only three agricultural prisons in the United States. There are miles of row crops, vegetable farms, 3,500 head of cattle, and one of the largest horse husbandry stables in the Country. This prison feeds itself and provides most of the animals used by law enforcement for mounted patrols in America. Inmates are the sole source of labor on these grounds, and with the exception of the medically, mentally, or behaviorally unfit, every inmate has a job. The grounds are impeccable. There are decorative flower gardens, neatly trimmed right-of-ways, pristine white cattle fencing. This could easily be Churchill Downs if there were only more trees and a racetrack.

Brad conducts our driving tour of Angola, directing Mr. Washington on where to turn and when to make stops. Brad is a curiosity in his own right. He is a man/boy of 27, married and father of two small children, his baby face and soft eyes seem ill-suited for a chaplain who ministers to the spiritual needs of one of the “hardest” congregations imaginable. Brad is a big man, a very big man, who turned down a major college football scholarship in favor of the seminary and God’s calling. As Brad talks about Angola and its residents, there is obvious love and respect for the population. God chose well.

Brad speaks with pride of the reforms that have occurred at Angola over the last 30 years. Gone are the days of the “hot boxes”. Inmates are provided with a well conceived system of freedoms, privileges, and incentives. He reports that prison gang activity has been largely eliminated. Serious inmate on inmate violence has been reduced from over 500 incidents per year to less than 100 annually. Offenders have opportunities to advance their education with GED classes and college courses taught by volunteers from local colleges and even Loyola University. Inmates eagerly seek to take advantage of those programs, even if they will never have the opportunity to use the knowledge in the free world.

As we proceed down one of the flat, ruler straight roads, Brad instructs Mr. Washington to stop at the small one-story concrete structure ahead on the left. This is the “Red Hat Cellblock”.

Angola’s Warden, Burl Cain, is credited with many of the reforms and improvements at Angola. Perhaps he subscribes to the notion that to forget one’s history is to risk repeating it. Red Hat was closed during the reforms implemented by a prior Warden in the 1970’s. Rather than level this structure, it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places under Warden Cain’s tenure as a monument to a penal system of abuse. It is now protected from demolition. Constructed in the 1930’s, Red Hat is a long, narrow, white, single story, single hallway, standalone building surrounded by a tall barbed wire fence. It has 40 small cells, arranged 20 on each side. The corridor runs end to end. Each cell measures approximately 7 feet wide, by 9 feet deep. There was no heat or ventilation except for a small 1 foot by 2 foot barred window near the top of the 10 foot outer wall. Each cell had a single toilet to serve the needs of the occupants. Brad reported that one of the cells housed an inmate who was renowned for his repeated escape attempts. That inmate became the solitary resident of one of the Red Hat cells, his cell door being welded closed for over 7 years until near the time that he died.

The grounds surrounding Red Hat are desolate and forsaken. At the rear of the Red Hat cellblock is a large rusted electric generator. Wires still run from the generator into a side room of Red Hat, the sole purpose being the delivery of a massive surge of electrical energy into the hands and feet restraints of a wooden chair within the chamber. Within that room is the original, but now rusted, three blade switch that delivered a lethal current of electricity to end the lives of the chair’s occupants. Except for the wires and stout wooden chair, the room is more like a room in a long-abandoned farmhouse… holes in the walls and ceiling, cobwebs, mud wasps flying about. Returning to the bus we leave Red Hat, but the images of Red Hat will never leave us.

We arrive at the last stop of our tour. The bus pulls into a parking lot. In contrast with our experience at Red Hat, there is a well-maintained parking lot. The grass is trimmed with the precision of a golf course putting green. Flowering shrubs abound in front of and on the sides of a newer single story white building. There is no fence but the pastel colored exterior and interior doors all have curiously large locks, the kind that take keys which are the size of those made for a toddler’s play. We are greeted by uniformed prison staff, and Brad is addressed by name. We proceed into a larger room that has 5 or 6 round dining tables. The brightly painted cement block walls are decorated by two large oil paintings. They are well executed paintings of scenes from the Bible’s Old Testament; Daniel in the den of lions, and Elijah riding a chariot to Heaven. Brad makes a brief presentation before leading us down a corridor and through another door. We enter. On my right is an opened door and through that door I see that there are two small adjoining rooms which are separated from each other by a sliding wood paneled door. Each of these rooms has two rows of short but comfortable wood and leather chairs, the kind that might be found around an office conference table. I notice that one of these two rooms is slightly smaller and contains fewer chairs than the other. The chairs in both rooms are arranged for all to face the large picture windows that look into our “destination room”. Each room has a loudspeaker above the glass.

We enter the “destination room” in silence. The air is emotionally pulled from our lungs. In the center of the ceramic tiled floor is a single cruciform bed upon a metal pedestal. It is constructed of white enameled steel, thin black vinyl pads cover the top and the arms, which extend to the sides. Without instruction we arrange ourselves around the perimeter of this room which measures approximately 14 feet on each side. Near the head of the bed is a small window of one-way glass which conceals its interior and any occupants. The only connection between the persons or things within that room and the room in which we stand is a circular 4-inch port. On the wall near the left arm of the bed are two identical red telephones. We are given to understand that one is connected to the State Superintendant of Corrections and the other to the office of the Governor of Louisiana. At the right arm of the bed are the two picture windows. These windows are crystal clear and provide us with an unobstructed view of the unoccupied wood and leather chairs. Lighting on the white ceiling, 12 feet above the bed, is furnished by 4 fluorescent fixtures. The light is harsh even though the fixture lenses have browned with age. I imagine that for some occupants of the bed the light might have been easier to gaze into than the eyes of the observers in the adjoining rooms… or the large round clock that is above the two red telephones. I think to myself… “Let those who enter here abandon all hope.”

This is a foreign place. It is a place where few have ever been. It is a place where fewer have left alive than have entered. We have 5 senses to know our surroundings, but here our nature resists the use of our senses. The only sounds of this place are those that we make by our presence. There are no smells. There is nothing within for the preservation of life, nothing to taste, nothing to drink. None of us touch the bed even though there is nothing to prevent it. What we know is delivered in stark clarity by our eyes. What our eyes disclose is all strange, unfamiliar, and not a part of our prior experiences… except that there, lying upon the cruciform bed, I see seven common but out of place objects, and I understand a sad irony…

…About 20 years ago, somewhere in this country or another, there was a factory. Within that factory a worker stood at their duty station. It might have been a day like any other for that person. Perhaps the worker took pride in the knowledge that the simple task being performed would result in the saving of countless lives, the avoidance of serious injury, the enhancement of safety and security for thousands of people. On that day the worker carefully selected and packaged 7 seatbelts, and addressed the shipping label: Louisiana State Penitentiary, Angola.

Peace Everyone. Peter Schloss

I came across some reflections I wrote while bicycling across the country in 2010 as a part of “Cycling for Change”. The memory of this one remains fresh in my mind:

Many of us have heard this speech a hundred times, “In the unlikely event that there is a loss of cabin pressure, a mask will fall from a compartment above you, and provide you with oxygen…”.

We take for granted that on a journey we will be provided with our basic necessities. Air, water, food, safety. Most of us never consider a couple of the other “necessities” that we also take for granted… hope and dignity.

Wednesday (June 2, 2010), the Cycling for Change Team was provided lunch at St. Leo’s Church soup kitchen in Seattle, Washington. St. Leo’s provides breakfast and lunch meals for between 800 and 1,100 people every day, 5 days a week! As one of the staff people explained, the numbers tend to go up at the end of the month when people find that they have run out of money.

Our visit was at the start of the month, but the lunchroom, in a large former school built in the early 20th century, appeared filled to capacity. As I walked through the door I was not prepared for the sight or the sudden emotional impact. It was as if I had experienced a “sudden loss of cabin pressure”. However, there was no mask within my reach. Before me was the “3-D” version of a post-apocalypse vision that we have all seen so many times in science fiction movies. A crush of vacant eyed people, soiled and many wearing what amounted to tatters. I was to dine shoulder to shoulder with the people that Seattle had forgotten.

I proceeded to the food line and was handed a brightly colored compartmented tray, the kind that you would expect to see in a grade school. There was a bowl for the soup, but no plates. My meal consisted of a slice of lunchmeat between two pieces of white bread, a bowl of chili-like soup, and a single chocolate chip cookie. A soup kitchen that serves a thousand people a day from donations does its best by making do with what it gets. The same applies to those who are served. There was coffee, hot and excellent by any standard.

I moved to one of the long cafeteria tables and found a vacant folding chair between two of the center’s customers. I ate and visited with my “companions”. I was beginning to feel a sense of accomplishment in embracing the experience when my eye was drawn to a man seated across from me a few seats to my left. I was wrenched back into the reality that for everyone but me this was not a diversion, not just “an experience”… this was reality and this was life. Again, there was a loss of “cabin pressure”.

The “oxygen” that was rarified in the atmosphere of the room was the loss of hope. Most of us have experienced a momentary loss of hope, but few who read this know what it means to be without hope, and without prospect of finding hope… true hopelessness. In the soup kitchen I could scan the tables and see a face here and there that bore the signs of a life yet with hope. A father with his young son, the boy looking up to dad with the hero worship that any father lives for. A man and a woman looking deeply into each other’s eyes, sharing grimy gap-toothed smiles between words and bites of their meals. But the man who had caught my attention was not one of these, there was no visible sign of hope with him.

What caught my attention was that he visited with no one. He sat solitary, ramrod straight, eyes forward. His hair was as neatly combed as hair could be that had not seen shampoo for many days. His stained and worn clothing would not have been suitable for donation to a second-hand store but was arranged with care. From his leather-like and wrinkled complexion, he looked to be in his 50’s, but I suspect the ravages of a life without shelter had aged him prematurely. He might have been 40. He ate slowly, with deliberation… with dignity. Everything about him screamed his dignity. He wore dignity like it was armor. The man grew in my sight and became larger than life. Whatever the cause of his condition, whatever the story behind a life rendered hopeless, he taught me that dignity may be given, and it may be cast aside, but it is never taken from one who chooses to keep it. Dignity dies last.

Peace Everyone. Pete