In rural Louisiana, 60 miles northwest of Baton Rouge, there's a new gated, golf course community. But this is not your ordinary country club.

Security guards at these gates are correctional officers. Members of the maintenance crew all wear the same black and white striped uniforms. The architect is a local dentist who learned how to build a golf course from books he bought at Barnes & Noble. And the first tee, perched high on a hill, looks out across the historic, 18,000-acre land it sits upon, the grounds of the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola.

"We live in a gated community and our gate guard has a gun," said Warden Burl Cain, of the prison, which is, in and of itself, a virtually self-sustaining community. "I'm the mayor and the town council and chief of police," he said.

Known to insiders simply as "Angola," the prison also houses over 600 non-inmates on the grounds, including many of its employees and their families. The children can use swimming pools and baseball diamonds built for them. And buses come through the gates every morning to pick them up for school.

Now the adults have a place for recreation too.

Cain said some employees suggested building a driving range. But he said, "why don't we just build a golf course?"

Building from Scratch

So, Cain approached Dr. John Ory, a golfer who had just been hired to serve as the prison's dentist, to oversee the project. Even though he had no idea how to build a golf course, Ory said he wanted to make a difference. So he agreed.

Ory went to his local Barnes & Noble to buy some books on golf course construction. Combining the reading with conversations he had with superintendents at other golf courses, Ory learned enough to get started.

Officials at Angola organized classes for the inmates in horticulture and golf course management, and trained them to build, and now maintain, Prison View Golf Course, which opened this June. With money generated from concessions at Angola's famous prison rodeo, which draws thousands of spectators every Sunday in October, the prison bought used mowing and construction equipment, built sprinklers and opened its own cement plant to create the cart paths.

Ory designed everything with an eye on the finances.

"We would look at how it was done in the world, and then invented a way we could do it in Angola," said Ory.

In a magazine, Ory saw tripod-shaped sprinklers that he could use to water the course. So he went into the prison and said, "Can't you all build this tripod thing?" And they did.

When he wanted to insert stone yardage markers in the fairways to show golfers the distance to the greens, Ory went back to the workshop.

"I said, 'Can you make one-foot by one-foot blocks?' And [the inmate] said, 'I reckon I can.'"

The Prison Golf Experience

Ory, a 16-handicapper who shoots in the 80s, hinted that perhaps the design of the course reflects the way he plays golf.

"I'm a short hitter," he said. And many of the holes have water hazards and bunkers strategically placed, so long hitters might have to sacrifice their distance for accuracy.

Besides the razor wire and security towers, the course resembles any other. Like most golf courses in the South, the fairway grass is 419 Bermuda and the greens are Tif Dwarf, both designed to withstand the scorching summer heat. The layering construction of the greens conforms to United States Golf Association specifications. The course covers 140 acres. And they built a 17-acre lake in the middle, complete with an alligator.

Prison View is a public-access course, and golfers can call ahead to reserve a tee-time. When they come to the prison, the officers at the gate hold their drivers licenses and allow them to pass. "We have to know who's here," said Cain.

Ory even built a snack bar that serves hamburgers and hot dogs. To his surprise this became so popular with the families that live on the prison property that they eat lunch there all the time.

"I didn't know that would be a big lunch hangout," Ory said. "They jam that thing."

The corrections officers that are assigned to guard the inmates working maintenance run the pro shop. "Correctional officers double for what you would call on the outside a greens superintendent and director of golf," Ory said.

Ory also went beyond just shaping tees, fairways and greens. Understanding that part of what makes a golf course special is the history of it, Ory integrated Angora's history into the course's design too.

The land now taken up by the golf course used to be a bull pasture. An old gate held the bulls in at its only exit. So, Ory chose to keep the gate in its original spot. He told the inmate construction crew, "leave that sucker up there and we'll paint it and put a sign by it."

Ory also placed a sign that briefly explains the prison's history, dating back to pre-Civil War, next to the first tee. And he routed one of the holes alongside the prison's disciplinary camp, called Camp-J.

Even though they are not allowed to play the course, the inmates put it to good use.

Developing Professional Skills

Many of the prisoners who helped build the course now work as the maintenance crew, mowing the fairways and smoothing the bunkers.

While they learn about horticulture and golf course construction in classes, they use the course for the practical application of those skills. "It's their lab for their school," Cain said.

Cain said several inmates help to maintain the golf carts and the sophisticated mowing equipment, and gain valuable skills that can translate into work when they are released.

"This is a really positive program where inmates are going to have meaningful work," said Cain.

He said the work that inmates are doing, building and maintaining the golf course, shows Angola's dedication to rehabilitation and re-entry preparation.

"It shows the people of Louisiana, the tax payers, that this is a prison that promotes rehabilitation, moral rehabilitation," he said.

When members of the public come inside the gates to play the golf course or to go to the rodeo, they see that the inmates are "not demons, that they're really well behaved," Cain said. "Maybe we shouldn't lock them up and throw away the key."

While the course was built for prison employees and the golfing public to enjoy, Cain said the ones who really benefit are the inmates.

Cain said he got a call the other day from a state representative, who was looking for crew-members for the construction of a public golf course in another part of Louisiana.

In the end, five men recently released from Angola got the job, which pleases the warden.

"I'm ecstatic that we can place five," said Cain. "That's really cool."

Resources:

To learn more about Prison View Golf Course, visit the website: http://www.prisonview.com