Source: Copley News Service
Golf has been used for many things over the years, but here on the banks of the Mississippi River beneath the rugged Tunica Hills the game is part of Warden Burl Cain's reward program.
At the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, Cain's inmates aren't lining up to play Prison View Golf Course, America's only nine-hole course inside a prison. None will ever play it. But working on it allows a prisoner to feel like a free man.
"Out on the street, I cooked in hotels like the Marriott in New Orleans," said Jeffrey Hawkins, 39, serving a life sentence at Angola and part of the golf course crew from the beginning three years ago. "When we first started, some of the guys thought it was a joke because of what it was. Everyone said a bull pasture can't be a golf course. But now they see a beautiful place with a lake, and for me, a person who loves to be outdoors, there's no better place to work."
On a recent rainy afternoon, course designer Dr. John Ory was leading a tour of the course when he noticed something strange in a greenside bunker, a few piles of horse droppings. And, up on the seventh green, the culprit had left a trail of unmistakable hoofprints that circled the flagstick. Ory, a dentist who designed the course from books and an active golfing imagination, played crime scene investigator.
"We had a line work crew out here with an armed guard on horseback," Ory said. "We still need to communicate some things here about where horses can and can't go."
That famous prison-farm "Captain" in "Cool Hand Luke," Strother Martin, might have said, "What we've got here is a failure to communicate."
Turns out Warden Cain loves that classic prison movie line, too.
"That is an absolutely true statement in prisons," Cain said. "Many, many times we do have a failure to communicate."
Cain had no trouble communicating his vision for this nine-hole layout with front and back tees so it can be played as 18 holes. It's inside double razor wire-topped fences with guard towers. Inside the outer ring there are five fenced housing camps and the main dormitory-style prison complex. Altogether, there are 5,108 inmates, most serving life sentences.
The mantra heard often inside is, "In Louisiana, life means life." Most of Angola's inmates die here.
The public may play the course, but everyone must submit to a background check. Convicted felons need not apply, and folks on any of the inmates' visiting lists aren't allowed to play, either.
Greens fees are $10 for nine holes. Rental carts cost $5 for nine holes. The pro shop is a gathering place for many prison employees because the snack shop has good barbecue, hot dogs, hamburgers and cold sodas.
Some of the best-behaved prisoners work on the course. When critics thought prisoners might play it, or that it was cruel for Cain to have them work on such a project, Cain straightened them out.
"We have 18,000 acres of land," Cain said. "I said, 'Why not dedicate that old bull pasture to golf?' My goal is to keep employees here on weekends because that's the reserve force in case we have an emergency. Some of them love golf. It's good therapy, good relaxation."
And the employees who don't golf?
"That concrete cart path is more than two miles of walking path through all those little gardens, the little ponds and big lake," Cain said. "It will be a really cool place to walk, like walking in a big park."
Once known as the "bloodiest prison in America," Angola, or The Farm, is now home to one of the most progressive and innovative prison programs in the nation, thanks to Cain.
"When I first came here (10 years ago) this place was still rockin' and rollin'," Cain said. "And I don't think we would have had this golf course. This is a heavy-duty prison. It's like Pelican Bay. It's like San Quentin, same type of inmates."
But Cain installed programs that changed the prison's culture and made inmates less violent.
"When I took this job, the thing I remember my mom telling me was, 'If you're going to be accountable for their souls, you better give them an opportunity to know the Lord.' I took that to heart. I didn't force it on them, but it allows us to deal morally with the staff, with the inmates.
"The inmates realized this is our land. We have to live in it, so let's live peaceful and less violent. When I came here I met with them and told them, 'I'm doing time, too. Let's do our time easy. We'll do it hard if you want to, but I prefer doing it easy. Let's all just have prison. We're going to have prison seven days a week, 24 hours a day. Why should it be hard?' It worked. It's crazy."
Angola has a campus of the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary that offers on-site college degrees to inmates. Angola sends prisoner-missionaries to other prisons to talk about its nonviolent, moral approach.
Instead of gangs at Angola, there are clubs.
"We don't do gang things," Cain said. "If we have a gang leader, he's going to have to be a toilet orderly. And nobody wants to clean a toilet, so therefore nobody wants to be a gang leader, so therefore we defuse the gangs."
There is a horse-breeding program, a wolf-breeding program (for chase and drug-sniffing animals) and, now, a golf course wrapped around a horticulture school.
"What's been fulfilling about it is seeing something being accomplished," Hawkins the inmate said. "Seeing this grow into a beautiful golf course with a lake and nine holes. Every day is a new experience here, something new is growing or has to be done."
Trampus Butler is a third-generation employee at Angola who lives in the community inside the prison grounds and is an avid golfer. A correctional officer, Butler drew high praise from Cain for "going the extra mile" in managing an inmate crew on the golf course.
Butler has seen change since the golf course opened last June.
"There were a lot of golf sets under Christmas trees this year here," said Butler, a member of the prison's chase team and tactical unit and also golf course director at Prison View. He has the course record, a 64 "with three witnesses," he said.
Butler had the original idea for a driving range, and Cain had it built in 1997.
A few years ago he called on Ory, who carries a 15 handicap, to lead the course construction. Ory delivered, but only after some trying days. His canvas was an old bull pasture that once penned up bulls for the prison's famous Angola Prison Rodeo, or the "Wildest Show on Earth." The inmates did most of the work, so the cost was kept at around $80,000, or roughly the cost of a few greens on a regular golf course. It was funded by the employees' recreation fund from the Angola Prison Rodeo.
Construction tested everyone involved, but, then, the first golf course built mostly by hand in more than half a century would do that.
Inside the prison, the guards and inmates didn't know what to make of the construction in the bull pasture. Class A trustee prisoners, the highest-level prisoners who have earned better jobs and duties, were selected to do the bulk of the work. They took horticulture classes and received on-the-job experience. Cain said he's already had a request from a public golf course for a crew of prison workers.
If there was one moment when Ory realized the value of the golf course, it came late one afternoon when he drove past the course on his way home. Butler was on the driving range holding an impromptu golf clinic for a group of youngsters.
"When we give these kids golf here and take time to teach them, we give them something for life," Butler said.
As for the inmates, Cain has given them something, too. He understands that the prison has Andy Dufresne types - Tim Robbins' character in Warden Cain's other favorite prison movie, "The Shawshank Redemption" - in here itching to get out. But he believes giving them a golf course to work on, giving them a taste of the world while they serve their sentences, lifts their spirits and keeps them going.
"Think about why they want to escape," Cain said. "They want to escape because they give up hope, or they escape because they can't live here because it's so unsafe. That's not the case now. We have hope now. Our biggest enemy is despair. We've overcome that and made an environment where they can live and exist, and society can be protected from them because they were violent, but now they can serve their sentence. But they know that when they change their life and change their ways, there's hope they can go free."
Or at least work on a golf course.
Prison View features
- The tee markers are handcuffs, welded shut.
- The first tee has 50 steps to the top for the only elevated tee and a view of the entire prison.
- The fourth hole has the original iron gate from the old bull pasture and a pot bunker in front of the green right out of Scotland.
- The tee box on the seventh hole is close enough to see prisoners and hear them in Camp J, the toughest in the prison.
- Inmates did most of the construction of the course by hand with hoes, rakes and shovels. Some heavy equipment from the farm was used to move dirt for the lake and slope fairways.
- The course is up B-Line Road from the prison's dog pen, which houses German shepherds and malamutes that have been bred with a 95 percent wolf, and also has tracking hounds.
- The prison was the site for movies such as "Dead Man Walking" and "Monster's Ball."