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This article is part of the NBC News Justice for All series.
ANGOLA, La. – He was called George Del Vecchio. On November 22, 1995, I watched behind the glass of the Correctional Center in Stateville, Illinois, the last breath of Del Vecchio. He was executed for the murder of a young boy, 18 years ago. I have witnessed this execution in the media.
While the other witnesses and I were escorted out of the prison that dark morning, I began to wonder: was the world safer because George Del Vecchio was now dead?
It was the first time I remembered our system of crime and punishment. Was it supposed to be only a punishment? Punishment? Or is the goal to make us safer? This is the kind of conversation that did not have much weight in the 90s. "Be tough on crime." But nevertheless, he stayed with me.
Last April, almost 24 years after facing the ultimate and irreversible sanction of our system, I approached this issue again from the only place that makes sense: inside a prison. I boarded with detainees from the notorious Louisiana State Penitentiary, known as Angola.
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During a particularly dark period in the 1960s, it was given the nickname of "the most lethal prison of the South". Today, Angola is the country 's largest maximum security prison in a state where the rate of incarceration is higher than almost anywhere in the world. . See in Angola, it is to see mass incarceration in the extreme.
For two nights, I slept and, to a lesser extent, lived as an inmate in Angola, housed in a tiny cell in the same institution where the most difficult detainees are incarcerated and, just a few steps away from the corridor. death. Successful journalism on the access. To understand the problems of criminal justice reform that are currently taking place at the height of a bipartisan wave, it was important for me to come closer. And that's what I did.
The open stainless steel toilets, the metal frame bed and the brick walls look like the ones you've seen in countless TV shows and movies. Discussions continue late into the night and toilets have often been filled aloud. Food is delivered on a tray through a horizontal slot in the door.
The only difference with my cell was the cameras installed by my team "Dateline NBC", which were running constantly except when nature called it. The men in my row were only allowed out of their cell for an hour a day and barely three hours a week in an outdoor courtyard.
NBC News and USA Today are looking in depth at criminal justice reform and mass incarceration in America. To read USA Today's interview with Lester Holt about his reports in Angola, click here.
My immediate neighbor, who was serving a sentence of murder, told me that he had not been outside for four years, preferring to stay indoors. However, I spent the night out of my cell, walking through the vast grounds of the prison, meeting with detainees and staff, and trying to understand how a foreign company works for most of us.
We chose Angola because it symbolized the inclusion of the American criminal justice system. In recent years, the country's highest incarceration rate has moved from Louisiana to second place (Oklahoma is now ranked first).
"We had the highest incarceration rate in the country in 20 years, but our crime rate was no better," said Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards, a Democrat. "The recidivism rate was not better." In 2017, Louisiana's legislature passed a series of reforms that resulted in the early release of many non-violent offenders, reducing its prison population.
Most of the 5,500 Angolan detainees are serving life sentences without the possibility of parole. Almost everyone had been convicted of murder. Yet our access to inmates and correctional officers was virtually unlimited. In fact, there were times when I found myself alone with detainees. I never felt threatened, but my senses were on alert. My cell was the only place where I completely lowered my guard.
However, I had no fear of speaking with Sammie Robinson. Robinson is 83 years old and has been in prison since 1953, long before I was born. I asked him if he wanted to go home and he said, "Yes, I want to go home." I thought, "After 66 years, is not it your home?" It's hard to imagine that Robinson represents a threat to society – more than six decades have passed since he killed a colleague detained while he was behind bars for a charge of Aggravated rape that was later thrown – but the fact is that he and most of the men I met in Angola will probably die between his walls. This is a reason they call "prison for life".
Robinson is only one of the geriatric inmates I've met and being part of an increasingly older demographic in US jails. Many are violent offenders, but many of them committed their crimes in adolescence. "Lifers", as they are called, are now a major issue in criminal justice reform efforts. I spent a lot of time exploring and fighting during my three days and two nights in Angola.
To one person, they told me that they had changed and that they were not the wild children that they were when they came to Angola. Everyone wants a second chance. But who do you believe? As I wrote in my diary back in my cell the first night, "you never know when you're in B.S.-ed".
During my visit, I learned a lot about the value of hope, such as the excitement aroused when incarcerated men were confronted with the parole board. I was surprised to see correctional officers discreetly looking for prisoners who they felt were particularly worthy of being released. Some even confessed their disappointment when these detainees were denied parole, contrary to the contradictory relationship between the police and the detainees.
I've also been surprised to hear some of these agents say that removing the possibility of parole makes the prison more dangerous for all. They said that the introduction of programs and learning opportunities for prisoners, especially those serving life sentences, had improved living conditions in Angola and improved their lives significantly. .
During the prison car repair program, I met a lifer named John Sheehan, who teaches work techniques to men who are about to serve their sentence. Sheehan will never leave Angola, but he tells me that teaching others has validated it.
"You know you did something and your life is worth it," he said.
On the outside, criminal justice reforms are often weighed against reliable data on the risk of re-offending and crime. Living inside, I found that it was a complex world, filled with contradictions and always rooted in punishment, but aspiring to become a place of reeducation. A work in progress that gets the attention it deserves.
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