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Having accomplished his goal of turning Angola into the safest maximum security in
America, Whitley retired as warden in 1995. In what "may have been a first in the history of U. S. prisons," more than 100 inmate leaders pooled their money to throw Whitley a farewell party. It was attended by prison
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Whitley received numerous awards and honors during his tenure as Warden. Several of those were: Profile in "Time" Magazine, December 1992; Alumni of the Year" Southeastern
Louisiana University 1993; Profile in "AMERICA", a Russian-Language Magazine, January 1994; Panelist, Time/Warner forum on Crime
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Within two years, Whitley had stemmed the violence. He established incentives for good behavior, such as extra visits, and increased educational opportunities with literacy tutoring, and computer and paralegal courses. He enabled some trustworthy and deserving inmates to travel outside the prison as
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teams to prepare for the strike. But he also told the media that deceiving the inmate workers was wrong and the work order should never have been issued. He understood that it put the inmates in a bad position, and he was not going to subject them to building the lethal injection gurney. With that
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He also said that he would continue to welcome outside media and cooperate with them: "We're not going to have anything to hide in Angola," he said. "And, if there's something that's wrong in the prison, I want to know about it, and my staff better correct it—because I intend to be proud of this
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commended him in two editorials for admitting the prison had erred and correcting the mistake. "It's refreshing to see a high-ranking government official admit mistakes and attempt to rectify them. It's a sign of integrity and responsibility."
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After leaving Angola, Whitley ran a private prison in
Florida. He was called back to Louisiana to serve as the Court Expert for the U.S. Middle District Court of Louisiana. It continued to oversee the state's prisons compliance with a 1975
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began to produce material for uncensored radio and television journalism. Whitley believed these efforts were related to the prison's other outreach programs designed to educate the public about prison life and issues. As he explained to
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that he would continue the decades-long policy of lack of censorship. This had enabled the inmates to produce reporting on difficult issues and to win major national journalism awards for investigating problems at the prison.
300:. This took place hours after an execution by electric chair had taken place. One of the welders had a brother who had been executed at the prison. Learning of these plans, hundreds of fellow inmates staged a work strike.
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In July 1991, inmate welders were ordered by a corrections department employee to build a "hospital examining table". They soon learned that it was a gurney to enable executions by
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to share his management philosophy with its corporate officers and editors, and profiled him in a three-page feature. He is the only
American prison warden to be so profiled. The
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during
Whitley's tenure. This was a concrete measure of the success of reforms he had enacted to increase the safety under which both inmates and employees live and work on the
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Whitley started his career as a corrections officer at Angola in 1970. He rose through the ranks during the prison's most violent years, becoming Deputy Warden.
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Like several
Louisiana wardens before him, Whitley was committed to an open door policy with the media. He told editors of the inmate-produced newsmagazine,
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magazine credited Warden
Whitley with turning around hopelessness and violence at Angola with "little more than his sense of decency and fairness."
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in Texas. In 1990 Louisiana recruited him to return to Angola to restore order. At a time of frequent stabbings, suicides and escapes, a
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statement, he ended the strike without violence and gained the respect of both the inmate population and his security force.
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He was promoted to warden of another
Louisiana prison, Hunt Correctional Center, and left the state to run a
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at the prison in response to an ACLU suit against the state for the horrendous conditions.
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When
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John Semien and James Minton, "Inmates placed in 'bad position,' warden concedes,"
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part of athletic teams and inmate bands that provided entertainment for churches,
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before his discharge in 1970. Shortly after, he began his career in corrections.
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Smolowe, Jill (December 14, 1992). "Bringing
Decency Into Hell: John Whitley".
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Milford Fryer, Suburban Editor, "Admitting mistake unusual, correct,"
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order about conditions. He served in that position until 2003.
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from the article and its talk page, especially if potentially
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David Snyder, "Angola lifers sorry to see the warden go,"
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Wilbert Rideau and Ron Wikberg, "New Man at the Helm,"
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271:prison and the way we operate it." Under Whitley,
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379:& Punishment - Feb. 1994; Profile by
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