This Is America’s Largest Prison

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Sep 1, 9:30AM EDT

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This Is America’s Largest Prison — © wellesenterprises / iStock Editorial via Getty Images

There are thousands of prisons and jails across America. Prison Policy puts the numbers at 1,833 state prisons, 110 federal prisons, 1,772 juvenile correctional facilities, 3,134 local jails, 218 immigration detention facilities and 80 Indian Country jails. This does not include military facilities. Total prisoners number in excess of 2.2 million, according to the same source.

The largest prison is the Louisiana State Penitentiary. Among its nicknames is “Alcatraz of the South,” named after the facility on an island in San Francisco Bay that operated from 1934 until 1963. Another nickname for the Louisiana prison is Angola, an earlier name of the property and a reference to the African nation.

According to The New York Times, the Louisiana State Penitentiary sits on an area that used to be a slave plantation. The area covers about 18,000 acres, and the prison holds nearly 5,000 prisoners. Another estimate has put the figure at closer to 6,000. The prison was first occupied in 1901.

An article in the Guardian described the Louisiana State Penitentiary as “America’s hell-hole jail.” It also reported that “four of five” inmates are serving life sentences. How tough is the Louisiana State Penitentiary? The Guardian article reports: “Unsurprisingly, Angola has always been famed for brutality, riots, escape and murder.”
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The Louisiana State Penitentiary is considered “self-sufficient.” It has a sugar mill, a farm, a ranch and repair facilities.

According to the Louisiana Department of Public Safety & Corrections, the prison does have programs to improve prisoners’ lives. Among them are educational programs, health care that meets the test of “constitutionally acceptable levels,” mental health programs and programs that prepare prisoners for release. In sum, the Louisiana Department of Public Safety & Corrections says:

We respect the dignity of people in prison and work hard not only to comply with federal, state, and other mandates, but also to provide an environment that will enable them to live a productive life upon release as a means to reduce recidivism.

The department also has a program that allows tours for schools, churches and criminal justice officials.

Click here to see which states have the most people in prison.
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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.