angola penitentiary

August 11, 2022 - As climate change-fueled heat waves become more frequent and intense, many incarcerated people endure dangerous triple-digit temperatures for long periods. Efforts are underway in some states to bring relief from the heat — and to challenge the underlying constitutional provisions that allow prisoners to be treated as subhuman.

April 20, 2020 - With the COVID-19 pandemic raging through correctional facilities, many states have ordered the release of nonviolent offenders in local jails or prison inmates at greater risk from the virus. But states in the Deep South have been slow to act. Meanwhile, Louisiana is moving its COVID-19-stricken prisoners to the notorious Angola penitentiary — an hour's drive from a hospital with a ventilator.

June 17, 2015 - Last week a federal judge ordered the release of Albert Woodfox, who's been held in solitary confinement in Louisiana for 43 years, though a higher court blocked the move while the state appeals. Meanwhile, prisoners are suing over Virginia's policy of placing death row inmates in solitary, arguing that the practice amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.

September 8, 2014 - Angela A. Allen-Bell, a professor at Southern University Law Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, has a new article out that turns the tables on anti-Black Panther Party rhetoric by asking if the treatment the group has suffered at the hands of government officials constitutes a form of domestic terrorism.

March 13, 2014 - This week Glenn Ford, a black man wrongfully convicted of murder by an all-white jury in Louisiana, was freed after spending 30 years on death row at the state's notorious Angola penitentiary. What did he endure in a place where a federal judge has ruled conditions amount to "cruel and unusual punishment"?

October 4, 2013 - Held in solitary confinement at Louisiana's notorious Angola prison for 41 years for a murder he did not commit, Herman Wallace passed away today -- just three days after his conviction was overturned and he was set free.

March 15, 2013 - A federal judge recently reversed the controversial conviction of Black Panther Albert Woodfox for the 1972 killing of a guard at Louisiana's Angola prison. Amnesty International has launched a campaign asking the state attorney general not to appeal in the case that has come to be known as the "Angola 3" for the number of inmates held in prolonged solitary confinement following the guard's death.