No. 117 - Angola

I was listening to an NPR Now segment on XM Radio this morning about a man who spent much of his life in the Angola prison. His name was Wilbert Rideau and he wrote a memoir called In the Place of Justice about his experiences there. The book was released today.

I learned that Angola is another name for the Louisiana State Penitentiary. It is also referred to as "The Farm" because the prison is still run as a working farm. Angola is the largest maximum security prison in the United States. It is surrounded on three sides by the Mississippi River.

The prison was formerly the Angola plantation, which was named after the area in Africa where the former slaves who worked the land came from. In Stephen King's book, The Green Mile, the fictional setting of the Louisiana Cold Mountain Penitentiary was loosely based on life on death row at Angola in the 1930s. Angola is the only penitentiary in the U.S. with its own radio station, KLSP (Louisiana State Penitentiary). It is referred to inside the prison as "Incarceration Station" and "The Station that Kicks Behind the Bricks."