PJI Submits Testimony in Support of Senator Cory Booker’s Bills Geared Towards Ending Unfair and Abusive Labor Practices

May 23

On May 21, 2024, PJI joined forces with Worth Rises and the #EndTheException campaign in submitting testimony supporting several bills introduced by Senator Cory Booker geared towards ending unfair and abusive labor practices in correctional facilities in the United States.

As part of this effort, our Executive Director Samantha Kennedy and Narrative Storyteller Sara Gozalo joined our emeritus board member Professor Andrea Armstrong and prison reform advocate Terrance Winn in attending the U.S. Senate subcommittee hearing on forced labor in prisons: *An Examination of Prison Labor in America*. Ahead of the hearing, PJI met with Senator Booker to discuss how his bills might support campaigns like ours in advancing real change throughout Louisiana and the rest of the country.

Both Professor Armstrong and Terrance Winn testified before the committee on the harsh, punitive conditions of the “farm line” at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, where people in prison are forced to do physically painful, humiliating, and degrading work, such as picking plantation crops by hand in sweltering heat.

Terrance, who survived 30 years of hard labor at Angola, recounted his experience being sent the Louisiana State Penitentiary at the age of 16.

“Two cents an hour, eight hours a day, five days a week. That is the pay that was decided makes is humans not slaves.”

Watch the Senate hearing here.

Back in September, PJI filed a groundbreaking lawsuit challenging forced labor at the Louisiana State Penitentiary (Angola). As part of this lawsuit, we are currently seeking a restraining order against the Department of Corrections to stop them from putting people out on the farm line as the dangerous summer heat sets in.

"In Louisiana, incarcerated people are forced to harvest timber, pick cotton, embroider sheriffs' uniforms, and serve grits in the cafeteria at the Capitol,” said Lydia Wright, Associate Director of Civil Litigation at the Promise of Justice Initiative. “For centuries, the state has extracted labor from enslaved people. One visit to Louisiana's plantation prisons makes clear: slavery never ended. It's beyond time to end the exception."