‘Longtermer blues’: Penal politics,reform,and carceral experiences at Angola

Abstract

While much has been written about how and why punishment has transformed in recent years, less is known about how this supposed paradigm shift might have shaped the lives of prisoners. Through a content analysis of The Angolite prison news magazine from the years 1979 to 2001, this article traces Angola's trajectory over the last several decades of the 20th century, examines how this path was informed by national law-and-order trends, penal politics in Louisiana, and Angola's own unique history, and analyzes how this influenced carceral experiences. I find that there was no sharp transition from rehabilitation to managerialism at Angola. Instead, the focus in the 1970s was on bringing order and security to the ‘bloodiest prison in the nation’. Moreover, rather than solely a product of neo-liberalism, responsibilization rhetoric at Angola dates back to the 1950s, when inmate self-help organizations were first created. Consequently, this article encourages us to re-think the welfare/risk dichotomy and contributes to the growing body of literature that stresses the need to investigate changes in penality on a subnational scale. Significantly, this project also advances our understanding of late-modern US punishment by highlighting the frustration, despair, and struggle with hopelessness experienced by Angola's longtermers.