John Whitley (prison warden)

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 employees and officials, and covered by news media throughout Louisiana.

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 & Punishment - Feb. 1994; Profile by CBS News (Mike Wallace) - "In the Killing Fields of America" - Jan. 1995

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 lethal injection. 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.

He was promoted to warden of another Louisiana prison, Hunt Correctional Center, and left the state to run a private prison in Texas. In 1990 Louisiana recruited him to return to Angola to restore order. At a time of frequent stabbings, suicides and escapes, a United States Federal Judge declared a state of emergency at the prison in response to an ACLU suit against the state for the horrendous conditions.

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 federal court order about conditions. He served in that position until 2003.

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.

John Whitley attended Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, Louisiana, and graduated in 1968. He enlisted in the United States Army that year, and served during the Vietnam War before his discharge in 1970. Shortly after, he began his career in corrections.

John P. Whitley (born January 1944 in Hammond, Louisiana) is a former Louisiana corrections officer who served as the warden of Louisiana State Penitentiary (or Angola Prison), the largest maximum-security in the United States, from 1990 to 1995. Time magazine credited Warden Whitley with turning around hopelessness and violence at Angola with "little more than his sense of decency and fairness."