Eighteen miles northeast of St. Francisville, Louisiana, on a bend of the Mississippi River where the Angola plantation once operated with enslaved labor, sits the Louisiana State Penitentiary — universally known as "Angola." At 18,000 acres, it is the largest maximum-security prison in the United States. It is also one of the most written-about, most controversial, and most historically weighted correctional facilities in the country — a place where the line between the antebellum plantation and the modern prison is, critics argue, uncomfortably thin.
The History: From Plantation to Prison
The Angola plantation was a 8,000-acre operation built on the labor of enslaved people before the Civil War. After emancipation, the state of Louisiana leased the property as a convict-leasing operation — a system that historians have documented as essentially re-enslaving Black men by renting their labor to private operators after the Civil War. The state purchased the property in 1901 and it became the official state penitentiary, expanding over subsequent decades to its current 18,000 acres.
The racial demographics of who has been incarcerated at Angola across its history mirror the racial demographics of the South's incarceration apparatus — overwhelmingly Black men, many serving very long or life sentences for crimes that would carry lighter sentences in other states. Louisiana's habitual offender laws and its expanded definition of crimes subject to mandatory life sentences have produced a substantial population of men serving life at Angola for offenses committed years or decades ago.
Agricultural Labor: The Fields Are Still Being Worked
Angola inmates still work the prison's agricultural fields — growing crops, tending cattle, and performing farm labor. Under the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, involuntary servitude is explicitly permitted "as punishment for crime duly convicted" — the one exception to the Amendment's abolition of slavery. Louisiana has historically paid incarcerated workers pennies per hour for this labor, which generates income for the prison's operations.
Advocates for incarcerated people — including the Promise of Justice Initiative, founded by Bryan Stevenson's Equal Justice Initiative and local Louisiana advocates — have argued that compelling Black men incarcerated on a former slave plantation to work agricultural fields for near-zero wages is not merely historical irony but an ongoing human rights violation. This argument has gained traction in national media coverage and in academic discussions of the Thirteenth Amendment's exception, though it has not yet produced legal change at Angola specifically.
The Angola Three and Long-Term Solitary Confinement
Angola became internationally known through the case of the Angola Three — Albert Woodfox, Herman Wallace, and Robert King — Black Panthers who spent decades in solitary confinement at Angola after being convicted of the 1972 killing of a corrections officer, in proceedings that their advocates argued were deeply flawed. Herman Wallace died shortly after being released from solitary in 2013. Albert Woodfox was released in 2016 after 43 years in solitary — the longest documented period of solitary confinement in US history. Their case is among the most cited examples of the extremity of solitary confinement practice in American corrections.
The Angola Rodeo and Media Access
Angola's annual prison rodeo — held on weekends in October — is one of the most unusual events in American corrections: a public event that draws thousands of visitors to watch incarcerated men compete in rodeo events. The rodeo has been criticized as exploitative — putting incarcerated men in dangerous situations for public entertainment — and defended as providing income, activity, and a connection to the outside world for Angola's largely life-sentenced population.
Louisiana DOC headquarters: 504 Mayflower Street, Baton Rouge, LA 70802. Phone: (225) 342-6740. Angola address: Louisiana State Penitentiary, Angola, LA 70712. Phone: (225) 655-4411. Website: doc.louisiana.gov.