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Angola Prison - Worth the trip - Angola Museum

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  • Louisiana (LA)    
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  • Angola - Things to Do    
  • Angola Museum

Great prison museum just outside the front gates of the Louisiana State Penitentiary (Angola... read more

angola prison tour

We were on the American Queen paddle steamer and saw the trip to Angola Penitentiary advertised... read more

angola prison tour

Angola Prison - Worth the trip

Angola is out of the way. The museum and visitor center is worth the trip. When I visited it was hot and sweaty. The docent team was made up of a retired guard and current inmate. Their sole purpose in being there was to scare the daylights out of the the visiting school kids. I don't know about the kids, but I was properly impressed. A key display in the museum was a mock up of a cell. It was barely big enough for a bunk, a sink and a toilet or bucket. There was nothing comfortable about it. Angola is also famous for its annual rodeo and mobs of visitors for that event.

The museum was a very simple, well put together, and free of charge. We went on the Saturday before the first Angola Rodeo. The artifacts recovered from inmates were very interesting. Lots of information about the prison's history. My boys enjoyed it too.

Not that I'm an expert but I have been to Folsom museum and this is far better! This museum really covers the history of Angola and some of the more notable convicts, prison breaks, and prison killings. There are all kinds of weapons that were confiscated over the decades on display with fascinating stories that shaped Angola. Nice gift shop too with clothing and barbeque sauce and jams made right there on the prison grounds. A real must see for history buffs and its 20 short miles from St. Francisville.

It's a very strange feeling to drive 25 miles down a road flanked by forest and swamp to find just one destination - the Louisiana State Penitentiary, better know as Angola Prison or "The Farm". It has around 18,000 acres of cultivated land worked by the 5000 prisoners - of which 100 are on death row so you cannot enter the gates set between high fences topped with razor wire. The welcome from the staff of the small museum was warm and friendly and we were quickly introduced to a gentlemen wearing an apron who was standing in front of an easel. Introduced to us as an inmate. Asked by my wife why he was in prison he replied simply - "murder, ma'am" He was 33 years into a life sentence but was hoping (and praying) for a successful appeal in the near future - there was a serenity about the 64 year old as we watched him work on the painting.... or maybe it was just resignation. The museum is fascinating - I've heard of makeshift knives being fashioned from a toothbrush but I've never seen a working handgun manufactured from bits in a prison workshop. One slightly more macabre exhibit was a coffin made within the prison - as one of the staff commented, some of the prisoners never leave - "even in death" An incredible exhibition of ingenuity and cunning applied by men who still hope to leave the wire fence behind - it was a thought provoking visit.

this was another stop on our way to new orleans, this prison is still working so all you can visit is the museum next door, but it was bigger than it looks and very informative. they have a gift shop that sells stuff made by inmates, and other goods involing the prison.

angola prison tour

Really enjoyed learning about the history of Louisiana Correctional Institutions. The Museum had some really cool exhibits. The portable electric chair and all of it's gear was interesting. Loved the gallery of paintings that were painted by inmates. The replica of one of the original jail cells make you glad you were never sent there. Love the tshirt saying " Angola: A Gated Community"

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This Is My South

A travel guide to the Southern USA

Angola: Alcatraz of the South

May 13, 2019 By Caroline Eubanks Leave a Comment

Louisiana State Penitentiary Museum

The History of Angola

An 8,000-acre plot of land between New Orleans , Louisiana and Natchez , Mississippi was purchased in 1880 by Confederate Major Samuel James.

It was named Angola for the country of origin of the slaves that worked the land shaped by the Mississippi River. Once the existing prisons in New Orleans and Baton Rouge became old and overcrowded, Louisiana State Penitentiary was established. 

The prisoners sent here were housed in the former slave quarters and worked through the convict leasing program. It was essentially the same as slave labor, continuing the building of levees, picking crops, and manufacturing bale rope and bags.

People would get arrested on small charges just to get used as workers. This practice of penal labor earned the prisons a profit until a flood destroyed the fields.

Convict leasing started in Louisiana in 1844 but was common throughout the South. It ended in the 1900s. 

America’s Bloodiest Prison

angola prison museum

Inside the walls, conditions were brutal. Riots and assaults were commonplace and the prison earned the nickname Alcatraz of the South.

There was some reform over the years, but the Great Depression and World War II left the prison system with little money for the people considered the lowest in society. 

In 1956, a group of inmates cut their Achilles’ tendons in protest of the work and conditions called the Heel String Gang. Charlie Frazier committed a well-known escape in 1917 and another group had a failed attempt in 1999. There was even an incident where the warden and his mother were kidnapped by inmates. 

Additional land was purchased for the prison in the mid-1920s, reaching its current size of 18,000 acres. It’s not America’s largest maximum-security prison and is spread across multiple camps.

Famous Inmates

The inmates come from all over the state and the majority will remain here until their deaths. A few of the past prisoners were famous, including Tejano musician Freddy Fender and Red Sox player Pinky Higgins.

Angola has also been used as a filming location for movies like JFK, Monster’s Ball , and Dead Man Walking , which was based on a book about real events at this prison.

But LSP has a number of outreach programs, including church services, counseling for veterans, an inmate newspaper, and the famous Angola Prison Rodeo .

It’s an annual event where the inmates are the performers but also sell their crafts made behind bars like license plate ashtrays and picture frames made from cigarette cartons. The event takes place every April and October and tickets go fast.

The Louisiana State Penitentary Museum

angola museum

In the 1990s, major reforms were brought to the prison, specifically in the area of medical care. In 1998, the  Louisiana State Penitentiary Museum was established to preserve prison history and to be a resource for info on the state correctional system. It’s one of the only prison museums in the nation to be located within an active prison.

Inside the museum are some unique artifacts from LSP’s history, including the retired electric chair and shivs taken from prisoners. 

Convicted murderer Richard Ligett even made coffins for Ruth and Billy Graham and another area showcases a carriage used for inmate funerals.

Another exhibit focuses on the rodeo, including the mounted head of Guts and Glory, the bull used for over 15 years, and information on three-time rodeo champ Johnny Brooks.

It contains the Louisiana Justice Hall of Fame and historic register protected buildings like the Red Hat cell block, built in 1935. It’s even staffed by former prisoners.

louisiana state penitentiary

Like any good museum, there’s also a gift shop which sells hats with the letters LSP on it, while t-shirts jokingly refer to Angola as a “gated community.” They even sell inmate-made crafts like ashtrays constructed from Louisiana license plates.

For its remote location and dark content, the Angola Prison Museum receives a surprising 120,000 visitors a year from around the world.

For comparison, Mardi Gras World in New Orleans, one of the city’s top attractions, gets 200,000 annual visitors. Alcatraz, another historic prison built 40 years before Angola, gets 1.4 million per year.

It’s not uncommon to see bus tours stopped in front of the small museum including from local schools and the American Queen Steamboat that docks nearby.

Otherwise, you’ll have to rent a car from New Orleans and make the over two-hour drive. The museum certainly focuses on a not-so-pretty part of our society but is important to learn about, especially since Louisiana has the highest rate of incarceration of any state. Inmates are still Americans and their stories are worth telling.

angola prison tour

About Caroline Eubanks

Caroline Eubanks is the editor of this website, a Lowell Thomas award-winning travel writer, and the author of This Is My South: The Essential Travel Guide to the Southern States. Her stories from the South have appeared in National Geographic Traveler, Afar, Thrillist, Roads and Kingdoms, and BBC Travel.

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The End of the Line: Rehabilitation and Reform in Angola Penitentiary

In the nation’s largest maximum-security prison, a remarkable warden has turned to religion to bring morality to the inmates.

angola prison tour

“It never makes sense to deny education to any human being.”

—Burl Cain, Warden, Angola Prison

The mayor of New Orleans, Mitch Landrieu, has made it a practice to visit the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola from time to time to consult with a group of convicted murderers, native New Orleanians all, about ways to stem the violence afflicting his city. It is always smart to go to the experts, Landrieu thought, and so he did. On a recent trip, he brought me along, which is how I was introduced to Angola and to the man who rules it: Burl Cain, the warden.

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As we drove up a deserted Highway 66 to the prison—Angola is the actual end of the line; the highway stops at the prison’s front gate—Landrieu had two things to tell me. The first is that Angola would bring me to my knees. Six thousand three hundred men are warehoused in Angola, nearly 80 percent of whom are African American. These are some of the most forsaken men in all of America. The second is that I shouldn’t be fooled by Cain’s affect and appearance. He may seem like a “good ’ol boy,” Landrieu said, but he’s actually one of the most thoughtful corrections leaders in the country. “The warden has some very progressive ideas,” Landrieu said. “He knows that we’re all about the quick fix—more guards, more prisons, more punishment. He knows that something is seriously messed-up in the way we do things.”

When Cain took over Angola two decades ago, it was one of the most violent prisons in the country. In 1992, Angola experienced 1,346 assaults, both inmate-on-inmate and inmate-on-staff. Last year, there were 343. This is not a negligible number, but keep in mind that Angola is the largest maximum-security prison in America, and most of its inmates are serving sentences for violent crimes.

Angola is a vast place, bigger than Manhattan, mostly farmland dotted with barbed-wire enclosures, gun towers and concrete dormitories, and we drove for a bit after clearing the front gate. Cain spends part of his day in a ranch house he uses to house and feed guests—a group of talented inmates serving life for murder do all the cooking—and that’s where we met him. He is rotund, garrulous, oracular, and, as Landrieu suggested to me, fascinating and contradictory—part Boss Hogg, part Marian Wright Edelman. I realized almost immediately that Cain was a subject worth plumbing, which is why he shows up extensively in my recent profile of Landrieu , and why The Atlantic thought it would be worthwhile to make a documentary about Cain and his heterodoxical ideas. On one of my return visits to Angola, I brought with me three talented Atlantic filmmakers—Kasia Cieplak-Mayr von Baldegg, Sam-Price-Waldman, and Paul Rosenfeld—and the (short but compelling) film they made of our visit is now online .

The documentary features Cain describing his unusual ideas about prison reform. Burl Cain, in short, used Christ to pacify Angola. He invited the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary to open an ordination program on the prison grounds, and today, hundreds of inmate-ministers are turning thousands of their incarcerated brethren to Jesus. Cain was quick to tell me that the saving of souls was not his first priority, though he is himself a Mike Huckabee-supporting evangelical. Instead, he told me that peace on his particular patch of earth was the immediate goal. Religion, he decided, was the most efficient pathway to moral living, and he needed to moralize the prison quickly, to bring down the violence. He said he doesn’t care which religion a prisoner adopts; any faith that leads to “moral rehabilitation” is fine with him. He even had a kind word for polytheistic religions.

Cain’s invitation to the Baptists was also prompted by a secular concern. In the 1990s, state and federal government funding for prisoner education was slashed—it was Bill Clinton who ended the Pell Grant program for incarcerated Americans—and the Baptists, as well as other private institutions, helped Cain keep Angola’s vocational training programs alive. Prisoner education is just one subject on which Cain sounds like a liberal reformer. One day, while we were driving in his SUV to Angola’s corn-processing facility, Cain told me, “If a person wants to learn, we have a responsibility to help him learn. A lot of these guys had terrible schooling outside, and that’s why they’re here in the first place.” He went on, “The ones who are here for life, they need schooling, too. We’ve got to keep them busy and useful. Some of the inmates in here for life are our best instructors in the vocational programs.”

Cain suggests, in the documentary, that America would not be the world capital of incarceration if it could figure out a way to intervene in the lives of young men before they commit acts of violence, rather than after. “We had to have a victim to send them here and get them prepared to go back into society and be successful. God help us, somebody has to be hurt, murdered or killed before we will recognize the problem we have and go back and fix it. In corrections we didn’t do it for so long because we all believed we were just supposed to lock them up. We forgot that ‘corrections’ means ‘correct deviant behavior.’”

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Louisiana State Penitentiary Ticket Price, Hours, Address and Reviews

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Louisiana State Penitentiary

  • Address: 70712, 17544 Tunica Trace, St Francisville, LA 70775, United States, Angola Map
  • Timings: 08:00 am - 04:30 pm Details
  • Phone: +1-2256554411
  • Tags: Family And Kids

As intriguing as a jail maybe, the Louisiana State Penitentiary is a heavily guarded security nestled on the outskirts of Angola. Set in farm-like environs this prison accommodates as many as 6,300 prisoners and is managed by a staff of strength 1,800. Owing to its wide expanse, various activities can be undertaken here by the inmates including farming and burying the deceased. Visits may be restrictive, however, don't miss a chance if you get one!

More about Angola

Personalize your visit to the city by chalking out a plan using Angola trip planner .

You can add cozy hotels in Angola like Budgeteer Motor Inn, Quality Inn Fremont and Comfort Inn Fremont.

Choose from variety of exclusive Angola vacation packages for your next visit or create own own. Check out the various options for how to reach Angola and finish off your vacation package by booking the ideal transfer.

How to Reach Louisiana State Penitentiary

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Love this? Explore the entire list of places to visit in Angola before you plan your trip.

Fancy a good night's sleep after a tiring day? Check out where to stay in Angola and book an accommodation of your choice.

  • Louisiana State Penitentiary Address: 70712, 17544 Tunica Trace, St Francisville, LA 70775, United States, Angola
  • Louisiana State Penitentiary Contact Number: +1-2256554411
  • Louisiana State Penitentiary Timing: 08:00 am - 04:30 pm
  • Try the best online travel planner to plan your travel itinerary!

Louisiana State Penitentiary Reviews & Ratings

angola prison tour

Attractions Nearby

  • Clark Creek Natural Area

picname

Can we see the searing chart?

angola prison tour

It is recommended that you contact the Louisiana State Penitentiary to get the correct information. You may try calling on  1 225-655-4411. 

How far is St. Francisville from Angola State Prison ?

angola prison tour

I think it is somewhere around 25 miles and takes a little more than half an hour to reach.

Is the play portraying the life of Christ (birth to resurrection) going to be put on again? Please let me know via this email. Came down for it a few years ago and LOVED IT!

Not sure. You may consider calling them at  Louisiana State Penitentiary contact number 1-2256554411 for details regarding the same. 

Rethinking Prison Tourism

Many former prison sites draw on the spooky and salacious to entertain visitors. but some are having second thoughts..

A group of people walk through a dark hallway with prison cells on either side.

Eastern State Penitentiary, a former prison turned museum in Philadelphia, used to lure in visitors every Halloween with an event called “Terror Behind the Walls.” The haunted house, with evil doctors, a jailbreak, and zombie inmates jumping out to scare visitors, was one of the museum's most lucrative fundraising events. But starting last year, the museum decided to drop the gore and emphasize the educational. Now the event is more optical illusions, eerie soundtracks, and live performances focused on the museum’s mission of highlighting issues of incarceration.

Museum curators debated the appropriateness of the haunted house over the years. Sean Kelley, Eastern State’s senior vice president and director of interpretation, said he had grown uncomfortable with the use of prison scenes in the haunted house. “I'm amazed at how numb many of us can be about these sites. The whole subject of incarceration is less a source of amusement than it was 10 years ago in America, but there's still like a layer of people thinking that it's funny,” he said. “But it’s not funny to us.”

Six actors are dressed in matching prison uniforms and with zombie make-up.  A magenta light shines on them.

Prison tourism often relies heavily on the spooky, the gruesome, and the salacious to attract visitors for a playful afternoon of ducking into cells and taking selfies in striped jumpsuits. But the entire industry, built largely on entertainment at the expense of incarcerated people’s dignity, is grappling with a growing criminal justice reform movement — and the business is being challenged by questions about exploitation and voyeurism.

Some prison museums are less scholarly history than grotesque spectacle. At the West Virginia Penitentiary , visitors can sit in a defunct electric chair, and play “ Escape the Pen, ” an escape-room style game where players have a one-hour “stay of execution” granted by the governor to escape death. On the penitentiary’s TripAdvisor page, there are pictures of smiling children sitting in the electric chair. (Tom Stiles, the tour director, said that the West Virginia Penitentiary tour “does not try to disrespect an inmate or an inmate's life. It does not try to disrespect the institution itself. We tell historical facts.”)

The Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City encourages visitors to take photos in the old gas chamber used to execute 40 inmates, over half of whom were Black. The facility offers an eight-hour overnight ghost tour, asking attendees if they can survive the night on “the bloodiest 47 acres in America.” Texas Prison Museum , where the gift shop sells branded “Solitary ConfineMINTS,” displays nooses, images of a lethal injection execution, and a defunct “Old Sparky” electric chair, and lets visitors pose for pictures in a replica prison cell.

The exterior of Eastern State Penitentiary is visible, and looks like a stone castle.  Four people ride bicycles in front of the doorway.

Eastern State Penitentiary was built in 1836 and closed in 1970. Aaron Ricketts for The Marshall Project

What was once the hospital ward at Eastern State Penitentiary now holds an exhibit on diseases in prison, from tuberculosis to AIDS to COVID-19. Aaron Ricketts for The Marshall Project

A 16-foot steel sculpture called “The Big Graph” offers a visual representation of mass incarceration in America. It charts other nations’ rates of incarceration compared to the United States (The U.S. is at the top of the chart, far ahead of the rest). Aaron Ricketts for The Marshall Project

An art installation in the prison’s greenhouse that illustrates the case of Doris Jean Ostreicher, an heiress whose illegal abortion and death led to the imprisonment of the man who performed the abortion. Aaron Ricketts for The Marshall Project

The guard tower at Eastern State Penitentiary. The museum has turned away from gore and is now focusing more on highlighting issues of incarceration. Aaron Ricketts for The Marshall Project

Visitors walk past cell blocks at Eastern State Penitentiary. Prison museums are grappling with a growing criminal justice reform movement — and the business is being challenged by questions about exploitation and voyeurism. Aaron Ricketts for The Marshall Project

In historian Clint Smith’s book, “How the Word Is Passed,” he recounts his visit to the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, a prison built on a former slave plantation. Upon entering, he is greeted by a disturbing image of a White man on horseback overseeing a group of Black men working in a field. The photo hangs in a gift shop that sells Angola branded T-shirts, shot glasses, and koozies that say “Angola: A Gated Community.” Smith writes that he looked around the gift shop, wondering whom it was attempting to serve: “Who saw the largest maximum-security prison in the country as some sort of tourist destination?”

In addition to the prison tour and museum gift shop, Angola operates an annual prison rodeo , in which incarcerated men with no prior training compete for the entertainment of thousands of visitors. The most dangerous event is the Poker Game. Officials release a bull into an area where incarcerated men are seated at a table; the last man seated at the table is awarded $500. The 2022 rodeo sold out in April. (An Angola spokesperson said the museum is a separate nonprofit from the prison or the Department of Corrections and “exists to provide a historical record of the prison’s past and present.” The voluntary prison rodeo “offers a unique opportunity for incarcerated persons to spend time with their friends and loved ones outside of regular visitation.”)

Prison tourism extends to hospitality as well. In Boston, the Liberty Hotel occupies the site of the former Charles Street Jail, which once imprisoned suffragists and civil rights activists, including Malcolm X. In the 1970s, a judge found conditions in the jail so horrible that they were inhumane. Today, guests staying at the luxury hotel can receive a tour of the jail with a complimentary glass of champagne, and dine at the restaurant, Clink, and the bars, Alibi and Catwalk, set on the former jail catwalk.

“The way the United States approaches prison tourism re-inscribes the kind of politics that support mass incarceration,” said Jill McCorkel, a professor of criminology at Villanova University. “It turns human suffering into a spectacle.” To her, the “gold standard” of prison tourism sites are Robben Island in South Africa, where Nelson Mandela was incarcerated, and Kilmainham Gaol , a former prison in Dublin, Ireland, for their thoughtful depiction of the sites’ history.

Over the past several decades, interest has surged in mass incarceration as a humanitarian cause, fueled by exploding prison populations and outbreaks of deadly violence — from the 1971 Attica prison uprising to the current chaos at New York’s overcrowded Rikers Island jail complex. In some ways, the changing tone of prison tourism sites reflects the shifting public perception of the stresses and inequities of the penal system. It is part of a broader rethinking of how we memorialize the past, from Civil War statues and former slave plantations to lynching sites and concentration camps.

A new prison museum is in the works, adjacent to the still-operational Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, New York. Brent Glass, the executive director of the forthcoming Sing Sing Prison Museum , says that Sing Sing’s history represents “every chapter in America’s criminal justice history.” Opened in 1826, Sing Sing is one of the best-known prisons in the country. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed there, the Yankees have played exhibition baseball games against incarcerated men, and Warner Brothers Studios has used the prison as a film locale.

The fact that Sing Sing still houses over 1,500 men complicates the ethics of building a museum designed to tell the prison’s history while thousands of incarcerated men and their families are still living that history. Glass says the museum has been designed in conjunction with formerly incarcerated people and their families, taking into account any sensitivities that might arise.

“We're not at all interested in pandering to voyeurism. And we're not interested in exploiting, as some museums do, the paranormal interest,” Glass said. “We think this story is compelling enough and interesting enough as a human story, a story of history, and a story of encouraging people to imagine a more equitable justice system.”

A woman in a coral-colored t-shirt takes a photo with a camera of two seats situated in what was formerly a gas chamber.

A visitor photographed the gas chamber during a tour of the Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City in 2013. The decommissioned prison offers several programs, including a ghost tour.

Last year, Alcatraz introduced an exhibit called “ The Big Lockup: Mass Incarceration in the United States ,” designed to “tell untold stories important to our nation’s history concerning the complex issue of incarceration.” The Fauquier History Museum at the Old Jail in Warrenton, Virginia, has a new exhibit focused on how the jail was a barrier to freedom for runaway enslaved people in the 19th century. The museum director told The Washington Post that he wants to “eliminate some romanticism about old jails and prisons.”

The seriousness with which Eastern State Penitentiary handles the subject sets it apart from most prison tourism sites. A timely art installation engraved on the glass encasement of the prison’s greenhouse illustrates the case of Doris Jean Ostreicher, an heiress whose illegal abortion and death led to the imprisonment of Milton Schwartz, the bartender who performed the abortion. What once was the hospital ward now holds an exhibit on diseases in prison, from tuberculosis to AIDS to Covid-19. Photos and narration from both incarcerated people and correctional officers tell the story of the prison in the 20th century.

One thing a visitor learns on a two-hour self-guided audio tour of the Eastern State Penitentiary is that the United States prison system faces the same problems it did when the cells of the old prison were full: the spread of disease, gang violence, isolation, mental illness, and the disproportionate number of incarcerated Black and brown people. Many correctional facilities still don’t have air conditioning and heat. During the narration on the audio tour, a formerly incarcerated man recounts being told by correctional staff upon his release that “they’ll see him in six months.” Last year, a formerly incarcerated man told me that correctional staff at his facility said upon his release that “they’ll leave the lights on for him.” What prison tourism can show us is how far we haven’t come.

At the end of the audio tour at Eastern State Penitentiary, a 16-foot steel sculpture called “ The Big Graph ” offers a visual representation of mass incarceration in America. It illustrates the racial breakdown of prison populations since 1970 and charts other nations’ rates of incarceration compared to the United States. (The U.S. sits far above the rest.) The exhibit, called “Prisons Today: Questions in the Age of Mass Incarceration,” was added in 2016 in an effort to contextualize the impact of Eastern State Penitentiary and U.S. prisons.

Eastern State’s Sean Kelley teaches a Zoom class to incarcerated men at SCI Chester in Pennsylvania, and during one recorded class, the men shared their thoughts about prison museums. Robert S., an incarcerated man at SCI Chester, said he doesn’t have a problem with prison museums, but organizers should make sure that people have an understanding of the effect on the people who were housed there. “The museum is for amusement, but this was someone's pain,” he said. “This was someone's struggle. This was someone's life. It wasn't amusement to them.”

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Michelle Jones was incarcerated in Indiana for more than two decades and was released last month. In a breathtaking feat of rehabilitation, Jones has become a published scholar of American history and an author of plays.

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IMAGES

  1. Angola Prison: A plantation turned prison

    angola prison tour

  2. Angola Prison Tour: American Queen Exclusive

    angola prison tour

  3. Angola Prison, One of the Most Brutal Prisons in the US

    angola prison tour

  4. Angola Prison From the Inside

    angola prison tour

  5. Angola Prison Farm Tour & Rodeo 2016

    angola prison tour

  6. Angola Prison Cell

    angola prison tour

VIDEO

  1. Angola State Penitentiary

COMMENTS

  1. Plan Your Visit

    The Louisiana Prison Museum is located at the end of the Tunica Trace (also called Highway 66) beside the Louisiana State Penitentiary. The main museum building is located outside of the penitentiary front gates. Our address is: 17544 Tunica Trace, Angola, Louisiana 70712. You can get customized directions using Google Maps. Parking

  2. Louisiana Prison Museum & Cultural Center

    The Angola Museum at the Louisiana State Penitentiary aims to preserve the past, honor all progress, and educate the future about Louisiana's most notorious prison. ... book signings, featured exhibits, special tours, or other events throughout the year! Learn more New Gallery. Intro. Features. Hours. M-F: 8am to 4:30pm Closed on weekends and ...

  3. Angola Museum

    The Angola Prison Museum is located outside of the main gate to the prison. It provides a history of both the prison and life on the farm as they call it, as well as information about the annual prison rodeo. ... We do offer group tours of some facilities and the property, but these require a group (like a church or third-party tour company ...

  4. Louisiana State Penitentiary

    The mission of Louisiana State Penitentiary is to provide for the custody, control, care, and treatment of adjudicated people in prison through enforcement of the laws, and management of programs. ... Angola, LA 70712. Phone (225) 655-4411. Mailing Address. 17544 Tunica Trace, Angola, LA 70712. Warden. Tim Hooper.

  5. LOUISIANA PRISON MUSEUM & CULTURAL CENTER

    Louisiana State Prison Museum & Cultural Center Our Mission. ANNOUNCEMENTS Spring Rodeo Dates Announced! April 20 & 21, 2024 Tickets available online or ... Angola, Louisiana. 17544 Tunica Trace, Angola, LA, 70712, United States. 225-655-2592 [email protected]. Hours. Mon 8am-4:30pm.

  6. Angola Prison Tour: American Queen Exclusive

    This video is a dramatic portrayal of the life of an inmate. You will be experiencing this tour from secured areas within the facility.

  7. Louisiana State Penitentiary

    The USGS topographic map of Louisiana State Penitentiary in 1994. The Louisiana State Penitentiary (known as Angola, and nicknamed the "Alcatraz of the South", "The Angola Plantation" and "The Farm") is a maximum-security prison farm in Louisiana operated by the Louisiana Department of Public Safety & Corrections.It is named "Angola" after the former slave plantation that occupied this territory.

  8. Louisiana Prison Museum & Cultural Center

    Angola, once known as "America's Bloodiest Prison," is the largest maximum security prison in the nation. The Angola Museum is the only museum located within an active maximum security prison. Home to twenty-one exhibits, including Louisiana's electric chair, a visit through the Angola Museum offers a glimpse into the volatility of the past and potential for the future.

  9. Toured the Prison Chapel and Museum

    Review of Angola Museum. Reviewed May 21, 2015. We participated in a tour of the prison grounds, chapel and museum as part of a tour organized by a Mississippi River Cruise.Our bus of passengers was accompanied by a member of the administrative staff from the prison and on our way to the site we heard of the history and the current situation at ...

  10. Angola Prison

    61 Reviews. #1 of 1 things to do in Angola. Sights & Landmarks, Museums, More. 17544 Tunica Trce, Angola, LA 70712-3029. Open today: 8:00 AM - 4:30 PM.

  11. Angola for Life

    There are more than 6,000 men currently imprisoned at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola—three-quarters of them are there for life, and nearly 80 per...

  12. Angola: Alcatraz of the South

    Alcatraz, another historic prison built 40 years before Angola, gets 1.4 million per year. It's not uncommon to see bus tours stopped in front of the small museum including from local schools and the American Queen Steamboat that docks nearby. Otherwise, you'll have to rent a car from New Orleans and make the over two-hour drive. The museum ...

  13. History of Angola : Louisiana State Penitentiary

    Welcome to our captivating video, "Unveiling the Past: The History of Louisiana State Penitentiary Angola." Join us on a compelling journey through time as w...

  14. Angola Prison From the Inside

    Joseph Norfleet, who shot and killed a 9-year-old boy in 1994, has spent the past two decades in Angola prison, where he is serving a life sentence. ( William Widmer / The Atlantic ) September 9, 2015

  15. History

    1901 Angola State Farms and The Board of Control. The State of Louisiana purchased the prison camp from the James family in 1900 and resumed control of its prisoners in 1901 after fifty-six years of convict leasing and conditions for inmates begin to improve.

  16. Louisiana State Penitentiary, Angola

    Louisiana State Penitentiary Address: 70712, 17544 Tunica Trace, St Francisville, LA 70775, United States, Angola. Louisiana State Penitentiary Contact Number: +1-2256554411. Louisiana State Penitentiary Timing: 08:00 am - 04:30 pm. Try the best online travel planner to plan your travel itinerary!

  17. Lester Holt Gives A First-Hand Look at Life in Louisiana State Prison

    Louisiana State Penitentiary (AKA Angola, "the Alcatraz of the South") is home to many hardened criminals, and now: a Dateline journalist who's going face to...

  18. Angola's Angst

    I am among nine people who have arrived to take a tour of the Louisiana State Penitentiary, better known as Angola Prison. I write about prisons regularly as a journalist based in Birmingham, Alabama, but this is my first time visiting a prison outside Alabama. Anyone can tour Angola for free with a reservation booked through the prison museum.

  19. Haunted Prison? Museums Face Questions of Exploitation, Voyeurism

    In addition to the prison tour and museum gift shop, Angola operates an annual prison rodeo, in which incarcerated men with no prior training compete for the entertainment of thousands of visitors. The most dangerous event is the Poker Game. Officials release a bull into an area where incarcerated men are seated at a table; the last man seated ...

  20. Events

    Louisiana Prison Museum & Cultural Center Home History History of the State Penitentiary Prison Rodeo Hall of Fame Visit Plan Your Visit Events About Our Foundation Staff and Board Contact Us The Museum Blog More Resources Support Us Donate Material Donation Become A Member Donor Circle Giving Tuesday Shop Newsletter

  21. The Farm: Angola, USA ( 1998 )

    Liz Garbus and Jonathan Stack co-directed this documentary, which explores life behind the bars of Louisiana's notorious maximum-security prison, Angola. Sta...

  22. Prison Rodeo

    "The first Angola Prison Rodeo in 1965."; Credit: Courtesy of the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections, 6 September 1965. The Angola Prison Rodeo is the longest-running prison rodeo that first began in 1965 as a joint endeavor between offenders, prison employees, and civilians who live in Angola's residential area. The ...

  23. Shop

    Info. 17544 Tunica Trace Angola, LA 70712 (225) 655-2592. Support us