Bringing Decency Into Hell

By JILL SMOLOWE ANGOLA

WHEN JOHN WHITLEY WANDERS INTO the courtyard of Camp H, he is not just any visitor. He is the warden. The Man. Yet his presence stirs hardly a ripple. He inspects a flower bed, points to some asbestos dangling from a pipe. Mostly he just loiters, signaling that he is open for business. Slowly, as if they have all the time in the world (which, of course, many of them do), half a dozen inmates drift his way. One complains about missing laundry; another asks that recreational time be extended. All are polite, but none display the eagerness of someone anxious to please. Whitley, 48, listens intently, asking occasional questions in a gravelly twang. Nothing in his courteous demeanor suggests, I am the keeper, you are the kept. "You understand that even if it's a small problem, it may be the biggest problem they have," he says later. "You don't just blow anyone off."

Conditions were not always so relaxed and congenial at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola. Just three years ago, the main prison and five outcamps at the 18,000-acre maximum-security prison farm -- physically the largest lockup in the country -- were rocking with murders, suicides and escape attempts. The mood was so tense that a federal judge declared a state of emergency, which included a state investigation and tightened federal oversight. Discontent among the 5,186 inmates could be summed up in a word: hopelessness. Prisoners, the vast majority of them lifers in a state where a life term means life, blamed their despair on tough parole laws and a dearth of gubernatorial pardons. At risk was a reprise of the chaos that in the early '70s earned Angola the dubious distinction of being the nation's bloodiest prison.

Enter John Whitley, a quiet-spoken Louisiana native with a lazy smile, whose cowboy hats and elephant-hide boots make more of an impression than his low- key manner. In just 32 months, he has turned Angola around, relying on little more than his sense of decency and fairness. The number of stabbings, hangings and escape attempts has dropped dramatically. The malaise has lifted. Security officers say Whitley has improved communications between the prisoners and the 1,545-member staff. Inmates credit Whitley with providing new educational and recreational programs. Most important, inmates feel they have an advocate in Whitley at a time when the courts and the Louisiana legislature seem bent on locking up felons and throwing away the key. "He's made a lot of difference," says Nathan Arnold, who is serving a life sentence for murder. "People have started feeling like people again."

The way inmates and security guards tell it, Whitley sounds like the hero of a Frank Capra movie. He is open-minded, impartial, considerate. In a closed society where everyone constantly scrutinizes everyone else, he merits the highest compliment: he is straight up. "With Whitley, what you see is what you get," says veteran inmate Wilbert Rideau, who edits the prison's hard- hitting magazine, the Angolite. "He's the best warden we've ever had." Whitley earns praise even from those who know he may preside over their execution. "The warden's pretty cool people," says Curtis Kyles, one of 35 inmates on death row. "He sees people as individuals, not throwaways."

To illustrate, prisoners usually start with July 22, 1991. At 12:10 a.m. on that date, Whitley presided over Louisiana's final execution by electric chair. Later the same day, orders reached the prison metal shop to construct the gurney that would henceforth be used for lethal injections. Two inmate welders balked; then 375 convicts joined their "work buck." Confronted by every warden's worst nightmare -- a prisoner rebellion -- Whitley did the unthinkable: he backed down. He publicly called the idea a bad one and said a private contractor would build the table instead. "He admitted he was wrong," says lifer Patrick DeVille. "Wardens just don't do that."

Initially, some prisoners interpreted Whitley's reversal as a sign of weakness. But many changed their mind a few months later. After the state legislature imposed a strict October 1991 deadline for inmates to challenge their convictions, Whitley, alone of Louisiana's 12 prison wardens, helped inmates beat the cutoff. He authorized the prison printshop to run off 5,000 appeal applications. He instructed the prison radio station to hold a question-and-answer program, brought in a lawyer to field questions, then ordered all inmates to listen. He also made sure that illiterate inmates -- fully 70% of the prison population -- got help filling out the forms. "The spirit of cooperation that developed between inmates, and between inmates and security, was unheard-of in the long history of Angola," noted the Angolite. Editor Rideau still marvels. "He chose to help inmates. That's not in his job description."

Whitley thinks otherwise. "They need to feel an advocate within the system," he says, "and that's the warden." To burnish Angola's image, Whitley started up a touring rock band and theater group. To help prisoners make better use of their free time, he added basic reading and college-level computer and paralegal courses. To encourage good conduct, he offered concrete rewards: increased visitation, telephone and TV privileges.

Whitley also proved an ally on the issue of greatest concern to lifers: parole eligibility. Inmates are lobbying Baton Rouge for laws that would grant lifers the opportunity for a supervised release, a practice common in most states. "Others saw us as subversive," says Norris Henderson, who heads the inmate effort. "This warden agrees with the things we're doing." Whitley maintains that his interest is practical. Currently two-thirds of Angola's inmates are serving life terms; in another 15 years, the prison will be filled with people who can never leave. "Put someone in prison for life with no hope - of getting out, and you've got a problem," he says. "Even Charles Manson gets a parole hearing."

That's not the sort of thinking that wins friends in the state that has taken the lead in tough sentencing laws and boasts the country's highest incarceration rate. "I don't think if you killed somebody you have the right to be back out in society," says Margot Blalock of the Baton Rouge-based Parents of Murdered Children. Whitley's response is neither indifferent nor apologetic. "I understand how families of victims feel. But I can't run my prison with all those negative feelings toward inmates."

Still, the security staff doesn't feel Whitley favors or coddles prisoners. "With him you'll get the closest thing to a fair shake," says Michael Gunnells, the assistant warden in charge of security. A year ago, for instance, at Camp J -- home to Angola's incorrigibles -- staff morale had bottomed out in a storm of hurled food, spit and excrement. Whitley responded with a strict set of disincentives. Curse a guard, forfeit canteen privileges. Throw a meal tray, lose your radio. "The burden is on prisoners," says Captain Davy Kelone. "It drives them crazy." That it does. Camp J inmate Virgil Smith likens his living conditions to a "concentration camp" and his punishment meals to "dog food."

Beyond routine complaints about disciplinary penalties, it is hard to find a Whitley detractor. Inmates, of course, may tell a stranger what they think The Man wants to hear. But they have no reason to lie to Keith Nordyke, the attorney appointed by a federal judge to look out for the interests of the state's 20,795 prisoners. Over the past year, Nordyke says, inmate complaint mail has dwindled from 50 letters a month to fewer than 10. At this point, even he is impressed by Whitley. "His attitude is, 'If you see anything wrong, let me know about it so I can fix it.' " While preparing last winter to sue the state for better medical care at Angola, Nordyke says, "Whitley answered my questions precisely and gave me full access to investigate the problem." The suit remains in the discovery phase, but Whitley has already shifted his budget around to add 10 nurses and three doctors.

Surprisingly, Whitley's progressive approach has stirred no ripples in Baton Rouge. "We always say about Angola that if it's not in the press for something bad, things must be going pretty well," says Ralph Miller, former chairman of the state house's criminal-justice committee. Still, admirers want < it known that Whitley is no liberal. "In this state, that's like being accused of being a child molester," says District Court Judge Robert Downing.

Whitley describes himself as "very conservative" on crime. He favors the death penalty and believes executions would serve as a deterrent if they were carried out more swiftly. He has presided over two executions. After each, he says, he went home and fell into a deep, undisturbed sleep. Whitley also says that his No. 1 concern is security and that he has "no moral problem locking up an inmate for life, as long as citizens understand that it'll cost them."

As a starry-eyed corrections rookie, Whitley admits, "I was going to save them all." Twenty-two years later, he thinks it's a "complete farce" to speak of rehabilitating inmates; they must do that for themselves. "All we can do," he says, "is provide the opportunity." Does he believe a person can really change? "Sure, I've seen it. They've aged. They've matured. They've shown they can handle their emotions." Would he give some of them a second chance? "Sure." Coaxed, the warden allows that there are "a couple hundred" he could set free tomorrow without reservation.

Some of those men were inmates back in 1970 when Whitley first started out at Angola as a classification officer. Armed with sociology and zoology degrees from Southeastern Louisiana University, he tried and failed to secure an appointment to the state police. Disappointed, he settled for a corrections job. After nine years at Angola, he moved to Louisiana's Hunt Correctional Center, where in 1983 he became The Man. "I never really had a desire to be a warden," he says. "I just kept being promoted up." (Sybil, his wife of 17 years, counters, "He says he's not ambitious. I say he is.") After retiring from the civil service in 1989, he became warden of a privately run prison in Texas. When the call came from Louisiana asking him to return, Whitley's first reaction was to laugh. "I couldn't see coming back to a prison of the size and problems of Angola," he says. He set what he believed to be an unreasonably high salary -- $70,000 -- then found the joke was on him when his price was met.

These days Whitley's stiffest challenge is finding time to himself. The 28- sq.-mi. domain over which he reigns is as demanding as any small town. There are fire and sanitation departments, a civilian population of 300 (mostly security staff and their families), a cemetery, a community , swimming pool and even a post office with its own zip code. Although Whitley, his wife and their seven-year-old daughter Susan live in grand isolation in a spacious brick house atop a hill overlooking Angola, the sense of privacy is illusory. "He can't even see Susan's swim meet without someone saying, 'Hey, boss, I've got a problem,' " says Sybil.

Whitley is not one to kick back with the guys. Free time means family time: computer games with Susan, gangster movies with Sybil, history books. He speaks from experience when he says, "If you don't keep family in mind in this business, you lose them." A first marriage fell apart during his early years in corrections, when he had not yet learned to leave the strains of the job at the office. "I had a bad temper," he says. "I'd carry it home and let it rip." Now he refuses to discuss office problems at home.

When Whitley took the wardenship, he signed on for three years. Extending his stay, he says, depends on how much he feels he can accomplish. It is clear Whitley wants more: more medical, culinary and maintenance staff, a bigger hospital, more classroom space. Like every other warden in America, though, he runs up against budget limitations. "This is shortsighted," he says. "What you send out of prisons is going to reflect what you had in them." If that includes the warden, Angola's graduates are now just a little more likely to come out fair, decent, straight up. Just like The Man.