- Donald 'Carolina' Biermann arrived at Angola prison in
1980. It was America's most violent jail, a Deep South sinkhole for killers
and rapists. 'I came to Angola with the sole intent of dying here. I just
did not care,' said the burly 48-year-old South Carolinian serving a life
sentence for murder.
-
- But things have changed in this sprawling Louisiana jail
that inspired Hollywood films such as Monster's Ball and Dead Man Walking.
Biermann, once a feared inmate, is now in his second year at a seminary
that has opened inside the prison.
-
- He hosts a Bible class for fellow prisoners on his wing
each Thursday. 'Jesus took the hate out of my heart,' he said with the
glazed conviction of a true believer. Around his thick necks hangs a shiny
crucifix made of prison-issue screws.
-
- Biermann is not alone. Angola, America's largest maximum
security prison, has undergone a transformation: it has found God. Controversial
warden Burl Cain has opened the prison doors to religious groups like no
other jail in America. The result has been a stunning decrease in violence.
In 1995, Angola saw 799 incidents of inmates attacking each other and 192
attacks on guards. This year the figures so far are just 78 inmate-on-inmate
assaults and 19 on staff.
-
- Angola is dominated by religion. Pastors and preachers
flock for visits. Its seminary is the only one of its kind in the US. Hundreds
of prisoners are taking its four-year course; scores have graduated as
ministers. Religious radio pumps through the prison 24 hours a day.
-
- Next month, a similar seminary, modelled on Angola, will
open in a jail in neighbouring Mississippi. Florida and Alabama are also
studying the idea. What has happened in Angola could spread all over the
South.
-
- But for some Cain has gone too far. He has been criticised
by the American Civil Liberties Union for blurring the cherished line between
church and state. 'Endorsing religion like this is going over the line,'
a spokesman said. For some, the prospect of Christian fundamentalists in
control of a prison is a source of worry and fear. A Louisiana state senator,
Don Cravins, recently complained that Cain's rule at Angola was too authoritarian.
'There is no accountability,' he said.
-
- Angola does seem a world unto itself. Its 18,000 acres
(larger than Manhattan) are surrounded on three sides by the Mississippi
river. Its fourth side hides behind densely wooded hills. It was once a
slave breeding plantation, named after the part of Africa where its miserable
captives were born. In 1901 it was taken over as a state prison and is
now home to 5,108 inmates.
-
- It is still a place of unique horror. In Louisiana a
life sentence means you will die in prison. In Angola more than four out
of five inmates have life sentences. They know that they will leave the
jail's embrace only in their coffins. Unsurprisingly, Angola has always
been famed for brutality, riots, escape and murder. That was something
Biermann knew all about. For years, the jail's violence was his way of
life.
-
- 'I have done things that people would say are inhuman,'
he said bluntly. 'A lot of the people I have done them to are still in
here.'
-
- All that changed with Cain. As violence levels have fallen,
so chapels have sprouted in Angola's prison camps. A freshly painted white
spire stands over Camp C. Another chapel is half-built at Camp F. A gift
of $200,000 will kick-start work on a new, much enlarged, chapel for the
main camp. All are built with inmate labour. Sitting at the same wooden
table at which he attends a weekly Bible class with his wardens, Cain is
unashamed of his religious beliefs. He cuts a very Southern figure, with
a rich accent and speech littered with homely sayings. But he is blunt
about what is happening at Angola: 'God is working through this prison.'
-
- Cain knows his jail intimately. As he speaks he constantly
takes phone calls: one to arrange a free eye operation for an inmate, another
to discuss the firing of a warden recently arrested for having sex with
a 13-year-old. He holds the hands of Death Row prisoners as they die in
Angola's execution room. Cain's face is the last thing they see. And it
was in that spartan chamber that Cain first realised he had to change Angola.
-
- 'When I came here I had been a warden for 13 years. I
had just done it like I always had done it. Then I saw the first execution,'
he said. 'We didn't say anything to the guy about his soul. I just thought
"What we are going to do to make this place better?"' Cain decided
that religion was the answer.
-
- In his nine years in charge of Angola, Cain has also
decided that many inmates need a second chance. Life should not always
mean life.
-
- 'We are wasting human beings. Prison should be a place
for predators, not for dying old men. Some old men are predators and they
can stay but we need to tell the difference,' he said. Cain says he knows
many inmates who he believes should be let out, but is adamant he is no
liberal: 'We are not soft.'
-
- No one who spends any time inside Angola can think it
is a soft regime. It still looks like a slave plantation. Like 19th-century
photographs come to life, work teams of mostly black prisoners march daily
into the fields to toil under the Louisiana sun. It is backbreaking labour
among cotton and corn. Watching them are mounted guards cradling rifles.
Prisoners are paid just four cents an hour. In the punishment block, J-Block,
inmates can spend 23 hours a day in their cells. Several have spent more
than 30 years in solitary confinement.
-
- Given the hopelessness of most prisoners, perhaps it
is not surprising that the seminary has been such a success. The college
sits incongruously in the main prison camp marked by the sign 'Baptist
Theological Seminary'. Inside, Chaplain Robert Toney sat in a room lined
with Bibles and one book entitled Making Peace With Your Past. Inmates
go to class from 8am to 3pm daily. 'They get the same qualification as
students on the outside, take the same exams and study the same books,'
he said.
-
- It is a tough course for some prisoners, many practically
illiterate. But it gives their lives purpose. William Fallon, 26, a handsome
man with a neat haircut, is serving life for murder. Now a born-again Christian,
he is in no doubt where he would be without the seminary. 'I would probably
be dead. If not dead, then insane,' he said. Fallon showed off his T-shirt.
On his chest was a verse from the Bible: 'Then the Lord answered Job from
the whirlwind.' He spun around to proudly show off the T-shirt's back.
'See me coming through Angola like a whirlwind,' it read.
-
- Angola's seminary is now producing convict missionaries.
Ron Hicks, 34, also serving life for murder, hopes to be one of them. He
is a graduate of the seminary and would like to preach in other jails.
'It all depends on where God calls me,' he said. 'You can walk through
my wing now and see the games room with people praying. You see Bible studies
going on.' So far 13 graduates, trained to spread their religion, have
left Angola to serve their sentences in other jails. They have set up their
own ministries in their new prisons. Perhaps, finally, there is a way past
Angola's razor wire and walls.
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- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2004
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- http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1293235,00.html
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