‘Music From the Big House’ delivers blues and soul from Angola prison
Musicians in bands at Angola often come from New Orleans, the birthplace of jazz, and from the nearby Mississippi Delta, the birthplace of the blues.
Tag: Angola prison
The future of farming cannot be built on forced labor
Louisiana deserves a correctional system that prepares people for successful re-entry, an agricultural system built on dignity rather than exploitation and a public conversation honest enough to recognize that slavery's legacy is not only in the past.
The fields confessed
A federal judge agreed that Angola works men into the ground in unconstitutional heat. Then he said he could not make it stop. “The fields did not change,” writes Andrea Hagan. “The law that was supposed to govern them did.”
ICE rushes to deport Palestinian grandfather, despite judge’s order to free him
A federal judge in Baton Rouge rebuked the government’s unlawful detention of the infirm 77-year-old. Then ICE seized him again.
The fields are still there: red beans and resistance
My mother has been saying it my whole life. Fifty-one years of hearing it. And on May 16, 2026, the same day she passed away and left me with the torch to continue this work, 800,000 people proved she was not just warning us.
Incarcerated man dies after struggle with correctional officers in Angola dorm
Witnesses inside the prison say that Basile was acting erratically and suffered a broken neck.
Hearing at Loyola gives a rare look ‘behind the curtain,’ at an often-invisible part of Louisiana’s justice system
An on-campus hearing showed decisions about freedom decided in real time, for men who have prepared for decades for a chance at parole.
A whisper from Angola: the case of Solomon Birdsong
His hope is for a second chance not to live a life of leisure, but to live a life of purpose under the weight of his past, to test the rehabilitation he claims in the real world.
Two New Orleans men, Wee and ‛Miracle Man,’ feel young but see how prison accelerates aging
Because of decades of high-stress and deficient healthcare, a 59-year-old in prison has a ‘geriatric morbidity’ that's equivalent to a 75-year-old on the outside.
Carnival is a wary time of year for thousands on supervision in New Orleans
Curfews and court rules shape Carnival for thousands in New Orleans who are on probation or parole. Others find themselves self-isolating after the trauma of doing time.
