Angola used to be considered one of the most dangerous and bloodiest prisons in the United States until the mid-70's the federal courts regulated the prison to be safer. The population of the prison is currently at 5108 inmates. It sits on 18,000 acres of land in West Feliciana Parish. I found that the surrounding area was not what I thought that the area surrounding a prison would look like. It was very unconvincing of one of the biggest and hardest prisons in the United States. What we see of the prison is just the buildings and the farm. We don't see the cells or the shackles.
             The prison is divided into types of security : maximum, medium, and minimum. The maximum security prison is called CAMP J. This is where the most dangerous prisoners are housed. The prisoners are confined to their cells for 23 hours a day. They get out for one hour a day to exercise and shower. They are handcuffed and shackled while they are taken out of their cells. We saw one of these prisoners while we were on the bus. You could kind of tell that he does not have a lot of human contact because when we passed by, he started waving to us even though his hands were shackled to his waist. The minimum security prison is CAMP F. This is where the trustees stay. When we walked through CAMP F, I really couldn't tell if these men where criminals or just regular people that you would find on the street. They didn't react to us the way I thought they would react to us. Most of them acted like gentlemen when we passed them. The one thing that made me open my eyes to the fact that thes!
             e men where both regular people and criminals was when the guy that talked to us walked past the building that we were in with a weedeater in his hands. When he spoke to us, I saw the regular man side of him. When I saw him walk past the building, I saw the prisoner side of him.
             At Angola, the death penalty is enforced. As of now, there are no executions schedul
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