Religion and Politics

The Prison that Dared to Pray: Angola Used Faith, Family to Stem Violence

In The Washington Times, Ralph Hallow reports on the use of faith and religion to try to stop violence in one of America’s most notorious prisons, the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. According to Warden Burl Cain, who arrived at the prison in 1995, “We are teaching these people things like how to be certified mechanics and how to respect themselves and each other. But that alone would only make them smarter criminals. We teach them morality through our Christian ministries and the examples we try to set. We change them spiritually.”  The numbers suggest that this approach is working: from 1988 to 1994, the average annual number of homicides, suicides, escapes, and assaults on staff and other inmates was 1,400. Over the last four years, that number has been less than 275.

Read at The Washington Times

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