PJI Releases End Plantation Prison Resource With Partners
PHOTO CREDIT: CHANDRA MCCORMICK AND KEITH CALHOUN
Today the Promise of Justice Initiative (PJI) debuts a new public resource showing the experience of people forced to labor in Louisiana’s prison system. The End Plantation Prisons Project includes 18 videos about what it is like to work in indentured servitude as punishment for a crime in Louisiana. It also has an interactive map that allows the public to learn more about the prison labor being used in Louisiana’s jails and prisons.
“We believe that with our nation’s history, people should understand what it is like to be forced to labor in Louisiana’s prison systems,” said Mercedes Montagnes, Executive Director at PJI. “What we do now simply does not share our values.”
The End Plantation Prison Project follows an 18-month investigation into forced labor practices across Louisiana in partnership with Loyola University New Orleans College of Law Professor Andrea Armstrong and Decarcerate Louisiana.
“There is nothing in the State or Federal Constitutions that requires people in prison to be forced to labor, do that labor in unsafe conditions, receive no compensation, or to do labor that will provide little value to people leaving incarceration,” said Professor Armstrong. “This is a policy choice we have made in Louisiana, and we can choose to do something different.”
The End Plantation Prison Project also provides a historic look at how the state went from slavery, into convict leasing, and landed in our modern prison system.
“In prison, you can use it as a womb to nurture and develop and grow; or you can use it as a tomb to die and decay and go out of existence,” said Curtis Davis, Executive Director of Decarcerate Louisiana. “I used it as an opportunity to get what white people need to say that I am deserving of pay to take care of my children.” Davis’ experiences are shared in one of the 18 videos available on the website.
The videos were directed and edited by PJI’s resident storyteller, Sara Gozalo, with Jackson Hill directing photography.