Under the scorching summer sun, on a former slave plantation, Lamont Gross and other prisoners bent in long lines, picking vegetables by hand, under the watchful eyes of armed guards on horseback. He said breaks were short and infrequent, with nothing to protect workers from the heat.
“I saw guys pass out,” Gross said of his days on the so-called farm line at the Louisiana state penitentiary, where men work for pennies an hour or nothing and face punishment if they refuse. “There were guys who got heatstroke. There were guys who had underlying issues, who were older or had some kind of disability, but they had to go there too.”
As daily temperatures reached record highs across much of the South, a federal judge took an unusual step, challenging the treatment of mostly black workers incarcerated in the fields.
America’s largest maximum security prison, known as Angola, occupies an area of 18,000 acres. It was once a patchwork of cotton fields where, historians note, even pregnant women and enslaved children worked from dawn to dusk during the busiest and hottest harvest months. Prisoners have been working the same agricultural lines since emancipation, often without shade, adequate breaks from work or even sunscreen.
In September, several incarcerated workers, along with the New Orleans-based advocacy group Voice of the Experienced, filed a class action calling for an end to the agricultural line and accusing the state of cruel and unusual punishment. But as temperatures rose in May, the men asked the court in an emergency proceeding to stop working during the extreme heat.
US District Judge Brian Jackson issued a temporary restraining order earlier this month. He said correctional authorities showed “deliberate indifference” to the risks of injury or death to incarcerated workers by sending them to the camps, even when they had serious health problems, including some with heart disease, high blood pressure and histories of prediabetes. or AIDS.
He ordered the state to quickly correct what he called “glaring deficiencies” in its heat-related policies.
The Louisiana Department of Corrections challenged the order, but the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the judge. Prison authorities have already taken some steps to improve conditions, providing inmates with sunscreen and folding tents for shade, state lawyers said. And when heat warnings are issued, which is common in the summer months, they agree to give men five-minute breaks every half hour.
Previously, the state warned that shutting down the farm line once the heat index reaches 88 degrees Fahrenheit (31.1 degrees Celsius), as requested by the plaintiffs in their emergency lawsuit, would “open the floodgates” to cease work “at any institution in the South.” .”
Several other Southern states also operate extensive penal farms on former slave plantations. Modern equipment is typically used to tend and harvest crops that are sometimes sold on the open market and exported, despite the US banning the import of products made with prison labor abroad. But in some places, like the Louisiana penitentiary, rudimentary tools and prisoners’ own hands are used to harvest fruits and vegetables that feed inmates.
“If we can get similar rulings here in Arkansas, that would be a blessing,” said Kaleem Nazeem, an organizer of the grassroots coalition decARcerate in that state. He spent 28 years behind bars and said he was routinely sent to solitary confinement for refusing to join the ranks of men forced to pick cotton, scenes he compared to those in “Roots.” Alex Haley harrowing book, and later miniseries, about slavery.
“The general public doesn’t know the history of the land,” he said, “because we as a society have chosen to be practiced at turning our heads.”
As part of a two-year investigation, The Associated Press found that some prison farms across the country have in recent years supplied millions of dollars worth of crops — including soybeans, corn and wheat — to major global companies such as Tyson Foods, Louis Dreyfus, Consolidated Grain and Barge and Riceland Foods. Agricultural goods produced through prison labor end up in the supply chains of popular brands like Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes, Ballpark hot dogs and Pepsi, reporters found.
While many companies did not respond to questions about their ties to prison farms, others, including Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland, said they were investigating the AP’s findings and had cut ties or were considering next steps.
Prison labor is legal in the United States due to a loophole in the 13th Amendment of the US Constitution, which prohibited slavery except for people convicted of crimes.
But it is viewed differently elsewhere. A UN investigator is expected to present a report to the body’s human rights council in September, calling it a form of modern slavery.
Meanwhile, U.S. prison officials tout the benefits of their work programs, saying they reduce recidivism, provide skills that can be used abroad and prevent prisoners from being idle.
The issue of extreme heat has become more concerning in recent years amid the effects of global warming. The Biden administration is proposing heat index restrictions for millions of farmworkers and others who work outside. Most inmates, however, would be excluded from this measure because they are typically not covered by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which sets the guidelines.
Some incarcerated workers say heat is used as a form of punishment, not just in the fields but also inside the facilities. Many units across the country do not have air conditioning and some prisoners resort to flooding their cells and lying on the wet floor almost naked to try to remain calm.
“If it’s 103 outside, it could be 107 to -8 inside your cell,” said Christopher Scott, who worked in the fields while imprisoned in Texas. “So you work me hard for free in this heat and then bring me back to my cell where I am subjected to being even hotter?”
“I’ve often seen men get heat stroke, heart attacks, because they just couldn’t stand the heat,” he said.
The Texas Department of Corrections says no prisoners have died from heat-related illnesses since 2012.
The Louisiana class action is scheduled to go to court in September.
One plaintiff called the farm line work “arduous,” saying “we had to squat down and pull out the grass with our fingers.” Others said they had difficulty walking or standing in the heat and that drinking water was often dirty. Some said they fainted while working and were punished for it.
The Louisiana Department of Corrections told the court it follows its “constitutionally appropriate” policy of protecting workers from heat-related illnesses while working outdoors, including monitoring temperatures every two hours and providing regular rest and drinking breaks. water when a heat alert is issued.
But the judge wrote that many of the prisoners’ complaints had merit, noting that an independent expert found that some were taking medications that affected their bodies’ ability to regulate temperature. And a court analysis of medical calls confirmed that some men sent to the camps without restrictions had serious health problems.
The judge also questioned the validity of some claims made by Angolan officials, including that workers could “rest whenever they want” and that the closure of the farm line would result in losses of more than $8 million annually – a figure Jackson disputed. He said that number likely referred to agricultural operations in general, and not just food harvested by a small group of prisoners on the farm line.
“The Court does not doubt that the inmates sent to Farm Line work diligently,” he wrote, “but this would be a feat of Herculean proportions.”
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