Inside a Prison Hospice

by Matt Kelley · 2010-01-21 07:35:00 UTC
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What does the end of life look like in prison?

Over the past three years, photographer Lori Waselchuk has visited the hospice at Louisiana's Angola State Penitentiary to document the prison's groundbreaking hospice program. Her images are an illustration of the system of cooperation and compassion between prisoners that can exist, and I'm glad they're touring the world to open people up to that reality.

Angola's hospice, started more than a decade ago, is still one of only a few such programs in the nation. It is overseen by a nurse, but run mostly by prisoners who take care of one another. A quilting program helps the hospice raise money for basic needs.  And prisoner by prisoner, it's helping change perspectives inside the system.

At first, as Waselchuk told the Morning News, prison staff thought the hospice "was a scam; they thought these guys were going to abuse the system. It was all suspicion. " But in the past 10 to 12 years, he says, the prisoners working there have "really convinced a lot of people," and also taught many staff members "about compassion and that crime does not define the person."

"I wanted to make pictures," she says, "that rose to how much I felt they could share."

To view Waselchuk's moving images, you can check out the exhibition website here. As I've previously written, the documentary The Farm: 10 Down includes interviews about the hospice program and some footage of the program, and is also very much worth checking out.

Photo Credit: Lori Waselchuk

Matt Kelley is the Online Communications Manager at the Innocence Project and a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Follow him on Twitter @mattjkelley.
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