LUCKY SEVERSON: From a distance, this sprawling, gated compound on 18,000 green acres could appear to be a country club, but Angola is not a country club. It is a prison for what the Louisiana justice system has determined to be the worst of the worst -- robbers, murderers, kidnappers in that category.

Angola has been known over the years as the biggest and baddest in the U.S. It is still the biggest maximum-security prison by far -- 5,108 inmates, all men -- but it's doing its best under Warden Berle Caine not to be the baddest.

MR. BERLE CAINE (Warden): When I came here and saw the first funeral, when they took him down there and dug a hole with a backhoe and put him in a cardboard coffin and put him in that ground and threw the dirt in and the top collapsed in on it, and one fell through the bottom of the cardboard coffin, I said, 'Enough is enough.'

SEVERSON: The prison cemetery is neat and well-groomed, but most of the inmates interred here were buried in cardboard boxes. And it is not a quiet resting place. You can hear the sound of gunfire at the firing range 100 yards away. This is not a country club. These cadets are shooting at targets the same, as they will any of the inmates who try to escape. Very few do. Because only the worst criminals end up here, with long, often life, sentences, most die of disease or old age. But now when they die, they're put to rest in proper wood coffins made by fellow inmates. Warden Caine considers himself a religious man with a forgiving spirit ...

MR. CAINE: Are they taking good care of you?

Unidentified Inmate #1: Oh, yes, sir.

SEVERSON: ... but only after a convicted felon has paid his price to society.

MR. CAINE: I think he should die with dignity, I feel great compassion for the victims, but I couldn't be there with the victims. I am in control of this, and so I'm supposed to do right by what I can control and do right with.

SEVERSON: Angola is known as the end of the road for good reason. Eighty-five percent of the inmates, who end up here, die here. And until a couple of years ago, they were often lonely, wretched deaths.

That was before Angola started a hospice program two years ago, where inmates, who would normally be under lockdown, are allowed to take care of other inmates who are dying. Alvin Royal has full-blown AIDS from a heroin needle. He was convicted of forcible rape, armed robbery, and second-degree kidnapping.

People help each other here.

MR. ALVIN ROYAL (Inmate): Oh, yes. Yes. We got as much love than we had out there on the street when we was shooting each other, robbing them, stabbing, you know, killing and raping.

Unidentified Inmate #2: It's a blessing to be able to do what we do here.

SEVERSON: There are six inmates dying here. Sometimes each has several helpers, sometimes only one, or at least a favorite. Warren Martin has Lou Gehrig's disease.

MR. WARREN MARTIN (Inmate): I feel pretty good.

SEVERSON: Arizona is here for life, and in Louisiana, life means life. Parole is very, very rare.

MR. SHULARK: I'll leave here the day I die. You spend most of your life -- man, the only thing you got going for you is whatever you can take from somebody, and then all of a sudden you find yourself getting something, giving something, and not wanting in return. That's a blessing to me because I ain't never known what that even meant and I've got some of the best things, my patients' love.

SEVERSON: Arizona decided to get involved in hospice after he saw a friend suffer a painful death with no one to look after him.

MR. ARTHUR RHOADES: It certainly gives you a lot better care to have a hospice, because you wouldn't get any care if it wasn't for the hospice.

SEVERSON: Arthur Rhoades was a physician, a general surgeon sentenced to 22 years for growing marijuana. He said it was for his wife, who was suffering from cancer. Rhoades is now himself dying from emphysema. His helper is Ralph Dawson, in for life.