Captive State

For decades, Louisiana has had the highest incarceration rate in the United States. If it were a country, it would have the second-highest incarceration rate in the world. Far from a modern phenomenon, this distinction is rooted in more than three centuries of historyroots that extend out from the principal city of New Orleans, once the epicenter of the American slave trade, to the agricultural fields of the Louisiana State Prison, commonly known as Angola. In its examination of the states long