Chandra McCormick. YOUNG MAN, ANGOLA STATE PENITENTIARY, 2013. © Chandra McCormick and Keith Calhoun
At 7,300 hectares, the Louisiana State Penitentiary – the largest maximum-security prison in the United States – is home to 6,300 prisoners. The inmates are forced to work the land under the 13th Amendment of the constitution, which legalises slavery in the case of incarceration.
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The penitentiary is one of the most prominent examples of how slavery has evolved in the United States, a nation that leads the world in profiting off the prison industrial complex. With more than 2.2 million people living behind bars, America accounts for 25 per cent of the prisoners on earth, despite having just 5 per cent of the world’s population.
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Commonly known as “Angola,” the penitentiary took its name after the country of origin for countless men, women, and children who were brutally enslaved and brought against their will to work on the pre-Civil War plantation where the prison now sits. The prison has another nickname, just as evocative: it is called “The Farm” to describe the labour inmates are forced to work, generating as much as 1,814 metric tons of cash crops every year.
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Chandra McCormick. MEN GOING TO WORK IN THE FIELDS OF ANGOLA, 2004. © Chandra McCormick and Keith Calhoun
Keith Calhoun. OUR CHILDREN ENDANGERED, THE NEW PREY FOR PRISON BEDS, NEW ORLEANS, 1982. © Chandra McCormick and Keith Calhoun