Revised from an article that originally appeared in The Angolite, November/December 1990, pp. 13-17.
A Louisiana criminal defendant convicted of a hard labor felony and sentenced to confinement has three possible destinations:
1. a parish jail.
2. the IMPACT program.
3. a state prison.
According to recent figures, almost half of the inmates in parish jails are convicted felons serving state time. This figure is the highest of any state in the country. An inmate can serve a term of any length, including life imprisonment, in a parish jail, if he does not present a management problem and the sheriff is willing to let him stay. Neither the offense nor the term in themselves determine where he serves his sentence.

Three types of inmates have priority to be transferred from a parish jail into the state prison system:
1. parole violators.
2. medical problems.
3. death row inmates.
Otherwise each jail is given a weekly quota of inmates to be accepted into the state system, and jail officials select the inmates to be transferred to meet this quota.

The sheriff is responsible for preparing the master prison records package on each state inmate. This package, usually prepared by jail staff, is sent to Corrections Services, which computes the inmate's release date. Eventually this information will be returned to the parish jail, if the inmate remains in parish custody. Parole, good-time release and full-term release dates are calculated the same way for state inmates in parish jails as they would be in a state prison.

A small number of offenders (generally 150 to 200 at a time) may be diverted into the state's IMPACT program. IMPACT stands for Intensive Motivational Program of Alternative Correctional Treatment. State corrections officials call it "intensive incarceration" or "intensive parole;" the media and the public call it "boot camp."

The program, located at Hunt Correctional Center in St. Gabriel, is similar to military basic training, but it is directed toward a specific type of offender: men and women, between 17 and 40, first or second offenders serving sentences of seven years or less. Sex offenders, overt homosexuals, violent offenders and mental health problems are also excluded. Corrections Services Headquarters makes the final decision on who is admitted.

IMPACT requires six months to complete.It emphasizes physical fitness and discipline to change inmates' habits and promote responsibility; more treatment components, especially substance abuse relapse prevention, have been added recently. Inmates in the program are segregated from ordinary convicts and upon satisfactory completion of the program are released on intensive parole.

Boot camp inmates in the IMPACT dormitory at Hunt can see what would be happening to them if they were not in IMPACT. From their dormitory than can observe the men entering the Hunt Reception and Diagnostic Center for classification. The HRDC processes three types of inmates:
1. inmates coming into the state system from parish jails.
2. transfers from other state prisons (for re-evaluation).
3. parole violators.

The inmate's stay in HRDC will generally last at least two and four weeks, depending on available bed space at other prisons. The classification process itself usually requires six working days.

Six different offices or sections play roles in the classification process:
1. Classification.
2. Assessment and Intervention.
3. Medical.
4. Records.
5. Education.
6. Security.

The Classification Section assigns the new inmate his temporary living quarters and issues him the institutional rules that will apply to him in state custody. Classification also prepares the Admission Summary, a background report which accompanies the inmate when he leaves the HRDC.

Assessment and Intervention is mostly interested in the inmate's mental health. It attempts to determine if he is having any severe mental or behavioral problems. This section uses psychological tests and interviews (focusing on substance abuse and mental health treatment history) to make up a psychosocial history and assess each inmate's current mental state.

The Medical Section compiles a report on the offender's past medical history and current physical health. Several tests, including blood and urine samples, are run, and each inmate is given a complete physical.

The Records Office prepares a file on each inmate. This file includes court papers, the pre-sentence or post-sentence investigation, the Master Record and the Computation Worksheet (copies of which will be given to the inmates), and reports from the other processing sections. This office is particularly important to the inmate in that it establishes release dated for incoming prisoners.

The Education Section determines the new inmate's educational level and identifies any particular educational problems or skills he may have. Each inmate is given a reading test. Inmates with speech and hearing problems or inmates who are candidates for special education are evaluated at length.

The Security Section monitors the inmates's behavior while he is in residence at HRDC. This section's function is not only to keep him securely confined, as would be true of any prison, but also to provide the Classification Section with any information about his behavior and attitude that would be useful in deciding which institution he should be assigned to.

The actual assignment is made by a three member Staffing Committee--the chairman from Classification and members from Education and Assessment and Intervention. This committee reviews all the records, interviews and test results that have been accumulated during the classification process; it then recommends to Corrections Service Headquarters a first and second choice of prisons to which the inmate is eligible to be transferred.

Among the circumstances most important in determining where the inmate will be sent are the following:
1. length of sentence.
2. degree of risk, including both violence and escape.
3. protection considerations (for informants, overt homosexuals, former legal officials, and other inmates with known enemies already in the system).
4. mental and physical health concerns (for inmates who are mentally ill, handicapped, or suffering from AIDS or other serious illnesses).

In general, inmates serving sentences natural or practical life (extending beyond their lifetime) will be sent to Angola. Inmates serving less than 20 years real time (the actual sentence as affected by good time) will go to one of the eight medium security prisons. But any hard labor felon may be sent to Angola, regardless of sentence length, especially if he is an habitual offender or if he has practiced disruptive behavior in custody. Inmates can also request assignment to Angola, and some do, mostly because they do not like the environment of the medium security prisons or do not want to associate with certain inmates already in residence at other facilities.

Corrections Services says that it has a policy of assigning inmates to prisons close to home, but this is difficult to do as a practical matter. One-third of the state's convicts come from Orleans and Jefferson Parishes, and another third come from the metropolitan areas of Shreveport, Baton Rouge, Houma, Monroe, Lake Charles, St. Tammany, Alexandria and Lafayette. Most prisons are not near these areas. There is one further basic and apparently eternal characteristic affecting prison assignments in Louisiana: the prison system is always at capacity. Prison officials cannot practically save beds for local boys. Inmates will be assigned on the basis of space available, taking into account any special considerations that apply to individuals. Transfers can be worked out later--often much later.

Each institution has its own routine for processing new arrivals. If an inmate is sent to Angola, which houses over 5,000 of the 20,000 inmates in state prisons, he will find a very strictly monitored and controlled environment waiting for him.

At Angola new arrivals are received on Mondays. They appear before the Initial Review Board which determines:
1. custody.
2. housing.
3. work assignment.

"Minimum custody" is rarely given to a new arrival. Most new inmates are assigned "medium custody," assigned to dormitory-type housing and given work assignments in the fields. Sometimes new arrivals are placed in "maximum custody" (due to disciplinary problems, youthfulness, protection needs, and more recently, mental health problems) and sent directly to cellblocks. Some incoming inmates with particular medical problems are sent to Angola and immediately assigned to medical wards.

Some new arrivals assigned to the fields never get there. New inmates are given medical exams, and a number of them are found physically unable to do field labor. They are assigned "medical duty" status with restricted assignments that do not involve hard physical work. Some inmates claim ailments or injuries that they may not have (or that may not show up in their records). These men may be assigned temporary duties until their true physical condition can be determined.

Men doing field work make up about a quarter of Angola's inmate population. Several hundred more men are assigned to jobs in support of agriculture or in prison shops--the tag plant, the metal shop, the print shop, the mattress factory and so on. There are hundreds more assigned as orderlies, in food service, maintenance, groundskeeping and other positions associated with upkeep of the prison itself. About 240 men are assigned to academic classes at any given time and another 240 to vocational training. Finally, there are well over a thousand men at any time, in an institution of this size, who are locked down for disciplinary reasons and not allowed to work, or who are prohibited from working altogether or assigned limited duties for medical or mental health reasons.

Angola's classification rules allow inmates to request re-assignment after 90 days without a disciplinary write-up. But an inmate who wants a change has to work his way up the ladder. The more desirable assignments are likely to be taken by inmates who have greater seniority or those who have special duty restrictions. With over 4,000 lifers (natural and practical) at Angola, the new inmate ranks very low in seniority.

Seniority is a big word at Angola, applicable as much to inmates as to staff. The preferred assignments, participation in clubs and organized sports, opportunities for school and vocational training, involvement in many prison activities; all these are controlled by seniority--either directly or by limiting participation to trusties (trusty status now takes about ten years to earn). So new inmates arriving at the Angola of the l990s are likely to find themselves working in the fields, watching TV or reading at night and doing very little to improve themselves (with the institution's help, anyway) for a long time after they arrive.

Eventually the inmate who behaves himself and wants to get more involved will have a chance to do so. He will have earned "senior" status. He will discover that his status brings him many benefits, but only so long as he remains at Angola. If he transfers to another prison, his status does not transfer with him. He must start at the bottom and work his way up again. The only differences are that he now has a proven record to build on, and that the inmate turnover at the medium and minimum security prisons is much higher, making for faster advancement.

Many long-term inmates do opt for a transfer to one of the other prisons--to be closer to home, to participate in a particular program that one institution may have that another does not, to enjoy the benefits of a less secure environment, or just for a change of scenery. Each of the institutions in the Louisiana prison system has its own "culture"--influenced by such circumstances as its location, size, living quarters, work assignments, management style and the nature of the population. Each has an initial screening process similar to Angola's, each has a records office for the growing files that accompany the inmate through state custody, and each has its own way of using up his time and energy.

"Hard labor" no longer means that the inmate will be forced to do backbreaking physical labor from dawn to dusk, as it might have meant in many prisons a century ago; what it means today is that for a term of years the convicted felon gives up control of his own life to the state. Only gradually, and only if he adapts success-fully to the institution's rules, practices and expectations, does he regain the freedom to make the important decisions in his life. For many men in prison, learning to make these decisions, with a genuine appreciation of their consequences, is the hardest labor they have ever been asked to do.