[Ppnews] The Mark of Cain: God and Man at Angola Prison

Thu Jan 7 20:14:03 EST 2010

The Mark of Cain: God and Man at Angola Prison

http://solitarywatch.wordpress.com/2010/01/07/the-mark-of-cain-god-and-man-at-angola-prison/
2010 January 7
by James Ridgeway

The 
<http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/01/06/us/AP-US-REL-Religion-Today.html>Associated 
Press today put out a laudatory piece on Warden 
Burl Cain’s program of Christian education at the 
Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. The 
article, which was picked up by the New York 
Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and dozens of 
other publications, is sure to advance Cain’s 
reputation as a great prison reformer.

The AP piece depicts Angola as a onetime den of 
violence and despair that has been transformed by 
Cain into a safe and orderly community where 
“everyone has a job” and where “students crowd 
into classrooms to study toward a college 
degree.” The prison’s bloody past, Cain tells the 
AP, was “all because of a lack of hope”–a 
situation the warden has treated with the dual 
remedy of education and redemption, in part 
through a degree program in Christian Ministry.

There’s another side to this story, of course, 
and it’s a whole lot grimmer than the AP piece 
would suggest. More than 90 percent of the 5,200 
men Angola will die there, thanks to the states 
harsh sentencing policies. Much of the work on 
the 18,000-acre 
<http://www.burkfoster.com/plantationdays.htm>former 
slave plantation consists of backbreaking labor 
in the cotton, corn, and soybean fields, presided 
over by armed guards on horseback. Some inmates 
do not work at all because they are kept in 
isolation in their cells, in the prison’s 
notorious Camp J disciplinary unit or in 
long-term solitary confinement. (Among Angola’s 
most widely known prisoners are former Black 
Panthers Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox, 
members of the 
<http://www.angola3.org/thecase.aspx>Angola 3, 
who have been in solitary for more than 37 years.)

An inmate’s fate at Angola depends upon how he 
measures up to the warden’s standards, which are 
rooted firmly in his personal religious dogma. 
Cain believes that there is only one path toward 
rehabilitation, and it runs through 
<http://www.amazon.com/Cains-Redemption-Dennis-Shere/dp/1881273245>Christian 
redemption. (According to Herman Wallace, Cain 
has at least once offered to release him from 
solitary if he renounced his political beliefs 
and 
<http://www.alternet.org/rights/50663/>accepted Jesus Christ as his savior.)

“The warden says it takes good food, good 
medicine, good prayin’ and good playin’ to have a 
good prison,” an assistant warden told 
<http://solitarywatch.wordpress.com/2010/01/07/the-mark-of-cain-god-and-man-at-angola-prison/%22The%20warden%20says%20it%20takes%20good%20food,%20good%20medicine,%20good%20prayin%27%20and%20good%20playin%27%20to%20have%20a%20good%20prison,%22%20Fontenot%20said,%20referring%20to%20the%20head%20warden,%20Burl%20Cain.%20%22Angola%20has%20all%20these.%22>Truthout 
in 2008, “Angola has all these.” To make sure 
there is ample opportunity for “good prayin’,” 
Cain has raised funds to construct 18 Christian 
chapels on the prison’s grounds. (One of several 
recent corruption charges against Cain involved 
<http://bestofneworleans.com/gyrobase/PrintFriendly?oid=oid%3A38324>shaking 
down a contractor for a donation to the prison chapel fund.)

Likewise, inmates at Angola can gain access to 
higher education only by embracing Cain’s brand 
of Christianity.  According to the 
<http://www.doc.louisiana.gov/lsp/educational_progs.php>prison’s 
own web site, while Angola offers literacy and 
GED classes and technical training in things like 
auto mechanics, horticulture, and welding, the 
only college degree program it offers is in 
Christian Ministry from the New Orleans Baptist 
Seminary. Only a few hundred prisoners are admitted to his program.

The 
<http://www.aclu.org/blog/prisoners-rights-religion-belief/challenging-angola-prisons-religion-policies>American 
Civil Liberties Union has filed lawsuits 
challenging some of Angola’s policies as 
constitutional violations of the prisoners’ 
freedom of religion; in one statement, the ACLU 
remarked: “Cain’s job is to be Warden of Angola, 
not the Chaplain of Angola.” But even some 
Christians would find Burl Cain’s vision of both 
human and divine justice unsavory.

A glowing 2008 article in the 
<http://www.bpnews.net/bpnews.asp?id=27125>Baptist 
Press<http://www.bpnews.net/bpnews.asp?id=27125> 
praised Cain for ”govern[ing] the massive prison 
on the Mississippi River delta with an iron fist 
and an even stronger love for Jesus.” The iron 
fist includes Cain’s determination to keep 
certain “dangerous” prisoners in permanent 
lockdown, a condition that many have denounced 
as<http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/30/090330fa_fact_gawande> 
torture. Cain also presides over the state’s 
executions. The Baptist Press article noted 
Cain’s special dedication to delivering souls 
from the death chamber into the hands of Christ. 
When he supervised his first execution as warden, 
Cain said, “I didn’t share Jesus” with the 
condemned man, and as he received the lethal 
injection, “I felt him go to hell as I held his 
hand.” As Cain tells it, “I decided that night I 
would never again put someone to death without 
telling him about his soul and about Jesus.”

In fact, Cain will get an opportunity to put his 
mission into practice a few hours from now, when 
the state of Lousiana carries out 
<http://solitarywatch.wordpress.com/2010/01/06/a-louisiana-inmates-death-wish/>its 
first execution in eight years, in the death chamber at Angola prison.

This post was written in collaboration with Jean 
Casella. Full disclosure: We have 
<http://motherjones.com/politics/2009/03/36-years-solitude?page=4>written 
<http://motherjones.com/politics/2009/06/life-permanent-lockdown>several 
<http://motherjones.com/politics/2009/12/herman-wallace-angola-3-solitary-confinement>articles 
about the Angola 3 for Mother Jones. Last year I 
also requested permission to  interview Burl 
Cain, as well as Herman Wallace and Albert 
Woodfox, and to  visit Angola; all requests were 
denied by the Louisiana Department of Corrections.

Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110

415 863-9977

www.Freedomarchives.org  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/ppnews_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20100107/d73c1773/attachment.htm>