Burl
Cain is the longest serving warden of Louisiana State Penitentiary (Angola), a
position he has held since 1995. He formerly worked as a warden at the Dixon
Correctional Institute in Jackson, Louisiana. He is well known for his work at
transforming prison culture and promoting moral rehabilitation. Warden Cain
serves on the board of Prison Fellowship.
When I heard this remarkable story that transforms, I was like wow. One
man who change the entirety of a prison through the leading of God. Who would
have thought of such. So many lives converted to purpose. So many dreams
converted to reality. So many hopes ignited with passion. So many lost souls
found. His story was a very wonder that so many things could change if we give
God the chance to use us for His glory.
R&L: What do people
outside of Angola need to know about the prison?
Warden
Burl Cain:
I think Angola proved a lot of things that even Scripture says that does not
need proving, like II Chronicles 7:14, "If my people who are called by my
name would turn their face to Me, I will heal their land." And that's what
happened here, because this prison's culture has changed, not because I'm a
smart warden or because of the authority here. It changed solely because these
inmates were praying to God to heal their land, and He did.
If
you turn to a moral worldview, you'll be okay. But if we turn away from our
religious heritage and we keep separation of church and state to the point that
is a wider gap than our forefathers intended, you're going to keep having
immoral acts and immoral things happen. The seminary program implemented by New
Orleans Baptist Seminary has changed the prison culture.
There
are 6,100 inmates here and more coming. This is a gigantic prison. Right now
it's only murder, rape, armed robbery and habitual felons. If your sentence is
less than 50 years, we don't keep you here. We're going to change that in the
future because these people have so changed, these lifers, that know they're
going to become teachers for the short termers, so that they can make it on the
street and save tax dollars by not having to hire so many teachers in literacy
and vocational skills and so forth. This place has become a place of
encouragement.
I
was impressed with the life skills people can learn. It's clear the educational
opportunities here are pretty advanced for a state prison.
The
four teachers of the generator and diesel school are today in Plaquemines
Parish that experienced flooding from Hurricane Isaac. They're working with the
sheriff in the community repairing all their air boats and all their generators,
and saving tremendous tax dollars.
So
you have four lifers living in Plaquemines Parish, working and fixing things on
the Bayou and getting those generators up and running. The largest one they
worked on so far is a 250 Kilowatts, which is large enough to run a pretty
small town. So that shows some of the leadership of the people here who do have
the life sentence. And what's sad is, prison should be a place for predators
and not dying old men. These guys who are healed should have a mechanism to be
released, or at least go before a board. Louisiana sentencing laws are too
harsh. But again, victims trump. Victims are first.
You
are a warden of a prison that has historically been known as one of the more
violent prisons and you've seen that change under your watch. But how do you
change the perception? And I imagine some of it has to do with talking to the
media and getting your story with the Rodeo out, but how do you change that
perception in terms of Angola's reputation?
It's
amazing because I've been here almost 18 years, and we were all talking about
it just yesterday. I've just about given up. I cannot change our reputation
because it still makes people shudder, "Angola." Life magazine
called it the bloodiest prison in America. And we can't shirk the reputation
because the people who come here are so violent. People don't realize how much
they can change.
And
that's why we really built the Rodeo up and have so many tours in this
riverboat tour. When they stop here in Baton Rouge or St. Francisville, they
get in a bus and they come here, because I'm trying to get people to see that
this place is not like they thought, and that people can truly change.
 |
Angola Inmate and
chaplain Jerome Derricks |
I
think part of that is probably just the name, Angola.
It
brings up emotion to people and it's a unique name. It's in the swamp. You
know? And they've seen that prison movie with Paul Newman, "Cool Hand
Luke." And they think of this as being that prison. People ask, was that
movie filmed here? They think it was filmed here.
You've
said that this shouldn't be a place for dying old men that have been
rehabilitated. Are there hundreds of inmates here that you would feel
comfortable releasing and have no problem with that?
I
would. There's probably hundreds. Not thousands, but hundreds, that could
probably go and would never come back. Today the parole board came and so we
recommended one for parole and held off on four others. So that was one out of
five. In Louisiana we sit on the parole board as a nonvoting member, and so I'm
sure today when the parole board leaves, that one will probably get to go and
the others won't go. We are the safety net to ensure that the wrong ones don't
get out.
Our
oversight was designed so that we would have the legislature more comfortable
with being a little more liberal with their sentencing laws, so that you just
don't panic and lock everybody up. See, the prison business caused stiff sentencing
because they failed at rehabilitating. Because the folks who run prisons forgot
that the word corrections means to correct deviant behavior. Well, they just
lock and feed and incarcerate, and they do traditional prison, so they get
traditional outcomes. But we're very non-traditional, so we get non-traditional
outcomes more than anybody else in the country. This is probably the safest
prison in America today, yet it has the potential to be the most violent
because of the type of sentences of the inmates who are living here.
Now
here's the good news. The good news is in places like Texas—and they were here
just visiting recently—they're changing their prison system to be exactly like
this prison. And so Southwest Baptist Seminary has started an educational
program into some of those prisons last year. And they're going to have 1,000
in the seminary within 10 years. And then they're going to send out field
ministers. They're going to be sending those to all 111 prisons in Texas. Now,
once Texas does it, then we're going to see other states do what we do here.
But they have to do it exactly like we did it, because some have tried but they
don't truly embrace it and so therefore it doesn't work.
If
we can cut the violence, we cut the cost. We also made it safer for us to be
guarding these inmates, and so that's a big deal. When they're released from
prison, they're less apt to rob and steal and rape and pilfer because they're
moral people. So therefore, we broke the cycle. So if we cut our recidivism
rate from 50 to 25 percent, then look how many people aren't victims of violent
crime. Therefore, there's no justifiable reason not to do what we did. We just
have to prove it, and that proof is starting now through research grants
through Baylor University. So there you have it. That's what's going to happen.
You're going to see these seminaries spring up in prison systems throughout the
country. You only need one in each state, and it feeds the rest of the prisons.
We saw the violence reduced 43 percent in Dixon Correctional Institute in six
months once the two field ministers got there.
But
the prison officials have to stop being traditional. And that means being too
aggressive toward inmates, and start having the attitude of correcting deviant
behavior rather than just lock and feed. And that's where you run into problems
with under funded jails or prisons because they don't have the resources to
really do the moral rehabilitation. And some systems are afraid to let one
inmate teach another because they think they'll create gangs.
But
even Miss America can walk anywhere in this prison with no whistles and cat
calls, and she's an attractive lady. And that's essential because that means
the culture has changed here. You're much safer here than you probably are in
New Orleans tonight.
Acton's
always had a very close relationship with Chuck Colson. I just want you to
comment on your thoughts on Chuck Colson and his legacy. He recently passed
away and the inspiration for this interview really grew out of the work Colson
has done.
I'll
tell you what I think about him. I am on the Prison Fellowship board. I was
just inducted on the board in May of 2012. That tells you what I think of
Prison Fellowship, because Prison Fellowship is going to play a tremendous role
in us establishing the seminaries in other states. Because they have the
political clout to open the doors to get the seminary in different prison
systems. You have to start with legislators and governors to compel the
Department of Corrections to do the seminary because, again, most prison people
are hooked up into traditional ways because they think it works. So Colson's
reach and influence is certainly deep and he is the reason so much of this is
possible.
But
prisons still have those high recidivism rates. They try to do re-entry and so
forth, and that's fine, but if you teach people skills and trades without the
moral component, you just made a smarter criminal.
You
have to change the person. It's simple. People have heard me say it many times.
A criminal is a selfish person who takes what he wants. He doesn't care about
your feelings. He's indifferent. He just takes what he wants. Moral people do
not do that. So if we can get them to become moral people, then we can cure our
prison problem. But it's like fish. You can't catch them all, so you've just
got to catch what you can.
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| Angola auto body shop |
A
lot of folks that come to Angola, maybe they're buying in but hopelessness
might take over, especially if they realize they've got no chance to get out.
What are the best ways of managing that?
You
just hit the nail on the head because overcoming hopelessness is crucial. The
lack of hope is our greatest enemy in here. In our case, once they become
moral, or once they become Christian, or once they become rooted in another
faith, then they believe in the hereafter. Most religions believe in life after
death. So if you believe in life after death, then it's not hopeless here.
Yeah,
your desire for God has got to kind of be greater than your desire to be free,
in a sense, from a worldly perspective.
That's
right. It does. I've got an inmate in here and he says, "I don't want to
get out. I'm here. I'm going to be free in heaven. I want to stay here and do
God's work in prison." And he's a horrible murderer. He doesn't even want
to get out. He just said, "I'm here. This is a good spot for me to do
God's work. I mean, why would I want to go somewhere else? There's plenty of
work right here. It's my mission field." So when you get inmates that
start thinking like that and talking that, you really overcome hopelessness.
And he gives hope to many others.
Now
certainly they want to go free. And the other thing we say is, you want to be
prepared. You want to be prepared that if you do go free, that you can stay
free, that you don't hurt anyone again. This whole thing is so simple. It is
incredible that we miss it. All I'm talking about it just pure common sense
when it comes to moral rehabilitation and too many miss it.
You
have a lot of critics, ACLU, other organizations, lawsuits.
They
like me. I get along really well with the ACLU. I really like them because
they're protecting my rights and I understand them and they understand me. I
don't cross the line. I do not mix church and state.
And
I keep that separate. The churches and ministries we work with don't want to
mix them. The seminary doesn't want you to mix them because they would lose their
tax exempt status. They do not want any state resources. So that's not a
problem for us.
Behind
bars we have to have all religions. And that's what we do. So we get along. I
don't cross those lines. And they like me for that.
You've
been warden here since 1995. How has being the warden changed your own
spirituality and your own walk with the Lord?
It
wasn't being the warden that changed me very much. I was a warden at another
prison for 13 years before that. I've been a warden now since 1981.
So
as a senior warden longer than anybody in the whole country, the thing that
changed me was an inmate execution, and particularly when I realized that we're
dealing really and truly with life and death. You can say it, but until you
look there and do it, and that guy is lying there dead, and then you think why
you did it, you killed this person, someone is in the grave. The Secretary of
Corrections, James LeBlanc, feels the same way because he was there with me. He
was a witness as a co-warden at the time. We realized then that our job was to
correct deviant behavior and prevent people from being victims of people who
are in our care, because then we fail.
So
we judge our failure - meaning that the inmate was released and murdered
somebody. So we failed. We took that really serious and we said we've done this
long enough that we really do know how to rehabilitate people. We really know
how to make it work. We're going to start doing it. And so that drove us to
really get out to the moral rehabilitation and the change. LeBlanc was a warden
of the first prison that I mentioned earlier that we sent the missionaries to.
He didn't really believe they worked, but he took a chance that it would work.
I knew it would work because I had them here, but he didn't have them. So once
they got there, these two lifers went to this medium security prison, the
chaplain was afraid because he thought we were going to replace him. But they
became the best chaplain orderlies he ever had because they were well educated
and smart, and they love God, and they started Bible studies. They started
preaching in the pulpit and it worked great.
What's
interesting to me is we have people who come here that want to do prison
ministry all the time, but they really could do a lot better if they did prison
ministry more in their own community. But they won't go out in the community
and get groups together and have religious study programs. They want to come up
here and get this captive group because it's easier, and study with them. And
at this prison, we don't really need to do that anymore because we have our own
preachers.
We're
thinking a lot on the same lines because I spoke to that earlier. Our whole
concept of missions is that we go to a society and train that society to take
care of themselves and then we step back.
So
now you've got these inmates that have this four-year seminary degree and you
have people that come and try to do prison ministry with them and teach them
about the Bible, but they know more about the Bible than the guy trying to teach
him. You know? So then we try to divert them to other places without hurting
their feelings. And we like them to come, but we wish they would come and sit
in church with them and listen to the inmate preach. There's a number of inmate
preachers that are just knock down great preachers.
What
areas of Angola could still be improved and enhanced to really expand on some
of the things you're doing here in terms of reaching people?
Well,
I think it's like we're doing with Texas. And they bring over different preachers
and church people and so forth, to come see what's going to be the outcome in
Texas, and they're amazed. And so I think that we exist now so that we can
perpetuate the faith through what we are because the great commission prevails
even for Angola.
We
have an inmate preacher who is a dynamic preacher, loves God, really doing it
right and he gets out of jail. Some would say you don't want the prisoner to go
back where he come from, because he'll be corrupted again. But in this case, we
want him to go back where he came from because he's incorruptible. He will
change a community where he came from. We talk about all this violence that we
have in communities, that we don't even want to go to into those places, but we
need to be sending these kinds of guys in prison who came from there back and
change that community.
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| Prisoners rehearsing Life of Jesus, Angola Penitentiary, Louisiana |
How
are we going to change a culture? How are we going to fix a community? How we
going to do it? We're preparing the people in this prison to go back to that
community and change it. The problem is, the politicians have got to figure out
and realize that and let's let them out of jail when they're rehabilitated.
Just don't punish them for the sake of punishing them and to get justice
because we're mad at them. Let's let them get rehabilitated, correct the
deviant behavior and then let's get them back out into the community to change
a community and prevent more victims of violent crime.
Complied by Author: Action Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty
http://www.acton.org/pub/religion-liberty/volume-22-number-3/angola-prison-place-encouragement
Episode II of My Story, Your Story
Abraham John
abrahamsworld.blogspot.com
abrahamwrite@gmail.com
