‘Bloodiest prison in the US’: children detained in Louisiana’s Angola prison allege abuses

Chuck Daniel in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on 27 October 2023. He was incarcerated at Angola prison when he was 16. Photograph: Annie Flanagan/The Guardian

On his 16th birthday, Charles “Chuck” Daniel was put behind bars.

Then, six months later, in the summer of 1996, he would find himself transferred to Louisiana’s Angola prison – referred to by some as the “Alcatraz of the south” – to serve out a 149-year sentence for attempted murder and armed robbery that in effect amounted to life imprisonment.