"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

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).

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.