BETWEEN COVERS AND BEHIND BARS

If journalism is supposed to be a crusading profession dedicated to improving the world, then Wilbert Rideau has picked the right calling. A convicted murderer serving a life sentence at Louisiana's Angola State Penitentiary, Rideau, 50, edits The Angolite, a magazine written by a team of six convict/ reporters and devoted to investigating every inch of the correctional facility that houses them: What does the Angola graveyard look like? How badly does the electric chair burn its victims? How do federal budget cuts affect inmates' diets? What are the lives of octogenarian prisoners like? What is the function of rape in prison culture? ''We tell the flesh-and-blood tales behind all the statistics about crime,'' Rideau asserts during a phone interview. He was eager to promote a collection of Angolite writings, Life Sentences: Rage and Survival Behind Bars (Times Books, $15), which he coedited with a recently paroled inmate, Ron Wikberg. ''Prisoners have no reality to the public. In our book, you get to see the price that everyone pays for a system that rarely rehabilitates. I hope readers will ask themselves, 'Are we getting what we want from our tax dollars?' I hope, also, we'll affect young people. As a young man, I had no idea what prison was like.'' An eighth-grade dropout who taught himself to write behind Angola's walls, Rideau is passionate about his work. Like ''free world'' journalists, he and the other reporters develop sources and interview people throughout Louisiana. Largely due to Angolite investigations, 19 aged and harmless prisoners were paroled, the Louisiana executioner was fired, and prison medical services were upgraded. Rideau stresses the difference between his work and the prison writing of someone like Jack Henry Abbott (In the Belly of the Beast). ''We knew we had important stories to get out. I didn't want to write about myself, but rather about social situations. Yes, I had personal problems, but they were not to be expressed in the book.''