Replay: Visiting the Prison at Angola

The Takeaway

WNYC and PRX

Politics, Wnyc, Daily News, Radio, Takeaway, National, News, News Commentary

4.6 • 716 Ratings

🗓️ 18 May 2023

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Original Air Date: August 30, 2022 More than 55,000 people across the U.S. are incarcerated with the sentence of life without the possibility of parole. This population been rising sharply in the past few decades, with an increase of 66% since 2003, according to research by The Sentencing Project. For those who are sentenced to live and die behind prison walls, there is a sense that they have been forgotten. But a new project is documenting some of their stories: The Visiting Room Project features interviews with more than 100 men who are serving with life without parole at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, better known as Angola. The Takeaway spoke with Project co-creator, Dr. Marcus Kondkar of Loyola University New Orleans, and with Mr. Arthur Carter, who was recently released from Angola after his life without parole sentence was reduced. "I think that once you get a chance to see this is the person that the taxpayers are still holding in prison, I think the question should resonate: why they still are? Why are they still serving life sentences with no possibility of going home?" said Mr. Carter.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hey, it's Latif from Radio Lab.
0:02.1	Our goal with each episode is to make you think,
0:06.1	how did I live this long and not know that?
0:09.6	Radio Lab, adventures on the edge of what we think we know.
0:13.0	Listen, wherever you get podcasts.
0:23.6	This is the takeaway, and I'm Melissa Harris Perry. People come and see us and they tell us how great we are and how we bless their lives,
0:32.6	and yet they leave us in this condition.
0:38.3	More than 55,000 people across the U.S. are incarcerated with the sentence of life without parole.
0:45.3	And then we lose our hair and we begin to get gray.
0:52.3	Then we start having a stoop.
0:55.8	We bend over, and then they have to visit us on the ward.
1:02.2	Then it's all over.
1:05.5	Thousands sentenced to a living death.
1:08.1	I realized that I could possibly die in Angola, that this could be the sum total of my life.
1:19.9	Angola.
1:20.9	It's the common name for the Louisiana State Penitentiary.
1:23.9	4,400 men in the state are serving life without parole, and it's the highest rate in the
1:28.6	country. You've been hearing the voice of one, Mr. Daryl Waters, who was sentenced to prison in 1992.
1:36.6	Now, Angola takes its colloquial name from the plantation that preceded it, an 8,000-acre
1:41.9	slave labor camp, which in turn was named for the West African nation,
1:46.3	from where the Portuguese exported human beings to be used as beasts of burden.
1:51.4	After the 13th Amendment was ratified in 1865, intergenerational chattel slavery was formally abolished.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from WNYC and PRX, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of WNYC and PRX and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.