"Three-hundred-sixty-five days a year, you're forced to keep that farm being productive," he said. "You're doing backbreaking work, you're working in the sun, working in the cold, you're working every season, but you're not receiving anything from this."

“The labor is described by attorneys as “pointless” — picking rotten watermelons, weeding grass by hand, watering crops with Styrofoam cups (The Appeal, 2024).

The pointlessness is not a flaw in the design. It is the design.

The labor does not need to produce anything except the experience of being forced to labor. The message is delivered in the doing, not in the product. You are here to be broken. Not to produce. To submit.”

“At Louisiana’s Angola prison, incarcerated workers are forced to pick crops in dangerous heat. A federal judge ruled last month that a recent Fifth Circuit decision took away his power to help them.”

Image: msppmoore/Flickr

“People would rather lose their minds than endure the Farm Line,” Winn said. “To the men still being punished inside Angola: We can’t give up. Our voice is our hope. We have to continue to believe and push. We can end this form of slavery.”

Image: Giles Clarke/Getty Images

Journalist Mike Ludwig writes, “Jackson’s ruling this week does not address the plaintiffs’ main claim: that the prison farm itself is an affront to human dignity that should be considered an unconstitutional form of cruel and unusual punishment.”

Image: MATTHEW HINTON / AFP via Getty Images

Journalist Marco Poggio writes “The court emphasized the plaintiffs had met their burden in showing that working conditions at the prison, which is known as Angola, posed a substantial risk of serious harm and possibly violated the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments.”

Journalist Robert Stewart writes “Although prisoners face dangerously harsh conditions while working the “farm line” at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola — including laboring outdoors in extreme heat — a federal judge presiding over a long-running suit filed by prisoners forced to work in the fields around Angola has ruled he could not force the state to fix the problem..”

Journalist Bernard Smith writes “After hard work in the sun on the Farm Line, he’d fall asleep, only to be visited by nightmares, Chadarius Morehead testified on Thursday, in the ongoing federal trial that will determine the constitutionality of forced field labor at Angola.“

PJI Executive Director, Samantha Kennedy reflects on the efficacies of Louisiana’s death penalty one year after the execution of Jessie Hoffman, the first killed by the state in 15 years.

Journalist Matt Bruce writes “‘The relief that they’re requesting is going to end the Farm Line. If you end the Farm Line, we’re not going to have any more produce,’” said Andrew Blanchfield, the lead attorney defending the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections and state prison officials against the plaintiffs’ allegations.”

Journalist Matt Bruce writes “They used expert witnesses and first-hand testimony from a slate of current and former Angola prisoners who have worked the Farm Line. One prisoner testified that guards often called him a “boy” and forced him to use his bare hands to dig potatoes while on his knees.”

Journalist Robert Stewart writes “Prison reform advocates are trying to put an end to the Louisiana State Penitentiary forcing prisoners to do agriculture work in harsh weather conditions.”

Journalist Bernard Smith writes “The court will determine whether forced prison field labor is unconstitutional and in violation of federal disability law.”

On 12/23/25, a federal judge certified a class action for incarcerated men at Angola Prison who are forced to perform punitive farm labor under extreme, unconstitutional and conditions that violate the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

"We are being terrorized. The policy is cruelty. The ideology is white supremacy."

BREAKING NEWS: PJI Client, Lloyd Gray granted new hearing based on evidence presented of racial discrimination in Orleans Criminal Court!

We created a short series of listening sessions called: When All You Can Do Is Watch: Hurricane Katrina from Inside Angola. Please listen to these recorded accounts.

Read the story of Lloyd Gray, one of our clients and one of the many incarcerated men unconstitutionally convicted due to Louisiana's longstanding racist tactic of Jim Crow Juries.

Yesterday, a federal judge granted a second temporary restraining order (TRO) against the Louisiana Department of Corrections and Public Safety related to the operation of the “Farm Line” at Louisiana State Penitentiary (Angola) during periods of extreme heat.