NCJ Number
139359
Date Published
1992
Length
352 pages
Annotation
Based upon inmate interviews, literature reviews, and a review of documents, this book by two inmates of Louisiana's Angola Prison portrays the arbitrariness and inhumaneness of life terms without parole, methods of execution, capital punishment, and the brutality of inmate power games.
Abstract
The selections in this book have the common theme of showing how prison conditions and corrections policies, supported largely by a punitive and frightened public that in turn influences State legislatures, dehumanize inmates. The executioner at Angola Prison is portrayed as a man paid and licensed by the State to kill human beings. He has stated that he would stab and even torture a person if the State paid and instructed him to do it. A number of sections in the book trace the history of the Angola Prison and some of its personnel. Writings about "lifers" in prison note that many remain in prison many years awaiting freedom while others who have committed similar offenses and received similar sentences are released. Those without families and attorneys to fight for them and call attention to their plight are lost in the system and remain in prison simply because no one cares about them. Although lifers and other long-termers in Louisiana are still released, in the past decade that number has decreased drastically. Louisiana statutes require that persons sentenced to life imprisonment cannot be considered for parole or other release unless the life sentence has been commuted to a fixed number of years. This procedure allows too many lifers to remain in prison simply because the proper bureaucratic procedures have not been initiated. Loss of contact with family and friends poses a problem for all inmates, but for long-term inmates, those relationships may be lost forever. For many long-termers, life in prison is not only without hope and without love, it also involves sexual brutality and often enslavement to a dominant inmate. Death row and capital punishment constitute the ultimate dehumanization not only of its victims, but also the society that inflicts it. The authors quote John Laurence (1935): "The rope has done more than break men's necks. It has numbed the brains of the living, and men's thoughts have remained inarticulate from fear of the freely falling knife and the headsman's axe." 71-item bibliography and subject index