The Social and Historical Context of Angola’s Bible College

• In Event: The Angola Prison Seminary: Effects of Faith-Based Ministry on Identity Transformation, Desistance, and Rehabilitation

Abstract

This presentation, which situates the Angola Bible College within a broader social and historical context, begins by tracing the dramatic growth in Louisiana’s prison population since the 1970s. While the advent of the Bible College at Angola in the mid-1990s was influenced by the meteoric rise in the state’s prison population, it also affected by the then-recent elimination of Pell grants, the growing number of lifers, the longstanding over-reliance on inmates to manage the prison, and the conditions at the prison that twice placed it into federal receivership since the 1970s. The presentation concludes by describing the offenders who have participated in Angola’s Bible College over the last 20 years.

Author

• Grant Duwe, Minnesota Department of Corrections