From The Appeal: Court missed chance to end forced labor at Angola prison in Louisiana, advocates say (Copy)

By Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg

Last month, a federal judge found that prisoners at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, better known as Angola, are forced to pick crops and dig ditches in sweltering heat, in conditions that are so dangerous that they violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. 

Nonetheless, he wrote that a recent decision by the notoriously conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals tied his hands—prison officials could continue to force men to work in the fields without taking any additional steps to protect their health and safety.

On the grounds of a former slave plantation, incarcerated workers, the majority of whom are Black, toil in scorching hot fields for hours under the watchful eyes of armed guards. Refusal to work, or not working fast enough, can result in disciplinary charges and solitary confinement. 

Farm Line workers at Angola are paid between zero and four cents an hour, far lower than the pay at other jobs at the prison. If a worker says he is having a medical emergency, prison officials can charge a $6.00 copay, equivalent to 300 hours of work for a person making two cents an hour.  

In 2023, currently incarcerated men, along with the advocacy group Voice of the Experienced (VOTE), sued the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections (DOC) and others, alleging that the conditions on the Farm Line constitute cruel and unusual punishment.

Last month, District Judge Brian A. Jackson agreed with the plaintiffs, but he refused to order the DOC to make any changes. Jackson based his decision in VOTE v. LeBlanc on a recent ruling in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, in another case that challenged inhumane conditions at Angola. 

In March, the Fifth Circuit ruled in Parker v. Hooper that if corrections officials institute reforms, even insufficient ones, to address unconstitutional conditions, then plaintiffs cannot show officials acted with “deliberate indifference,” a prerequisite for a successful Eighth Amendment claim. Jackson said that before the Parker decision, he would have found in favor of the plaintiffs. “Deliberate indifference,” as defined by the U.S. Supreme Court, means that corrections officials know prisoners are at risk of serious harm and fail to take “reasonable measures” to address it.

“Under the Parker Ruling, however, the Court is constrained to find that Defendants’ implementation of remedial measures negates a finding of subjective deliberate indifference, even though these remedial measures are inadequate to cure the constitutional violation,” Jackson wrote (emphasis in original.) 

In a statement emailed to The Appeal, DOC said the agency is “pleased with the judge’s ruling” and that the “safety of incarcerated individuals remains a top priority in all institutional operations, including outdoor work assignments.”

Terrance Winn worked on the Farm Line for more than a decade during his time at Angola. He said he expected the judge’s ruling. 

“I knew that ruling would go the way that it went,” he told The Appeal. “History has shown us, in the state of Louisiana, and in the South, everything is still going to be modeled behind slavery. No one wants to really completely let go of slavery.”

Winn arrived at Angola in 1991, when he was 17 years old. He was sent to the Farm Line.

“Within three days, I was in the field,” he said. “I was put in the field and given a tool that I had never saw in my life and told to use that tool.”

At first, they worked on a ditch. Then the guards told him to pick cotton. 

“My whole body locked up,” he said. “When they said, ‘cotton,’ my mind went back to slavery, and I refused to do the cotton.”

He was placed in solitary confinement for seven or eight months and then sent back to the field. 

Winn’s experience is commonplace, according to the plaintiffs. 

“It really serves as this tool to indoctrinate people when they first arrive at the prison, and then hangs over them as a threat throughout the rest of their time in the prison,” said Samantha Bosalavage Pourciau, a Promise of Justice Initiative (PJI) Senior Attorney. PJI represents the plaintiffs in both the Farm Line and Parker cases.

Over the course of the litigation, the judge ordered the DOC to make numerous interim reforms. However, the orders lasted only 90 days, leaving prison officials free to modify or abandon them in the future.

Corrections officials have installed permanent shade stations with water spigots, benches, and fans; and instituted 15-minute breaks every 45 minutes. They added more than 40 medications to the heat pathology medication list. A person can be assigned to “Heat Precaution Duty Status” if they have a condition or take medication that makes them more sensitive or vulnerable to heat-related injuries. They also instituted a policy that workers on Heat Precaution Duty status must be brought inside when the heat index reaches 88 degrees. (The heat index is what the temperature feels like after accounting for humidity.)

But dangerous conditions persist. The prison’s official policy says that all work will cease only when the heat index reaches 113 degrees. In Jackson’s ruling, the judge admonished the DOC for refusing to lower the threshold to 103 degrees, despite clear evidence that the current policy “creates a substantial risk of serious harm to the health and safety of incarcerated men working on the Farm Line,” he wrote. 

The judge cited the “undisputed” data from the National Weather Service (NWS), which defines the “danger zone” as a heat index between 103 and 125 degrees. Exposure to extreme heat can result in heat stroke, heat exhaustion, heat cramps, heat rash, and death. Despite the potentially fatal conditions, Jackson asserted that he could not order DOC to change the policy or institute any other reforms. In fact, the DOC can now roll back all of the changes it’s already made. If officials abandon these reforms, the men at Angola will have to file another lawsuit. 

The plaintiffs had asked the court to order the DOC to implement a number of permanent reforms, such as offering Farm Line workers an educational program and barring prison officials from using it as a way to punish people or “break in” new arrivals. Jackson wrote that the Fifth Circuit’s ruling barred him from ordering the DOC to adopt any of these measures.

Jackson’s ruling focused exclusively on the Plaintiffs’ claims about extreme heat, but did not address the “dignitary harm” of forcing people to “essentially mimic chattel slavery on the land of a former plantation,” said attorney Pourciau. 

“We spent years litigating their racial trauma, forcing men to reenact slavery as punishment and as a means of breaking new prisoners,” she told The Appeal. “The court entirely failed to address the dignitary harm aspect of the Farm Line, which was deeply disappointing.” 

Winn says slavery and the Farm Line are nearly identical. 

“Only difference is two-cent incentive pay,” he said.

The case underlying Jackson’s decision is Parker v. Hooper. In 2015, incarcerated men sued the DOC, alleging that the healthcare provided at Angola was so deplorable that it violated the Eighth Amendment and the Americans with Disabilities Act. 

In March, the Fifth Circuit ruled that because corrections officials had instituted some changes since the lawsuit was filed, the plaintiffs had not met their burden to show deliberate indifference and sent the case back down to a lower court for review. 

In her majority opinion, Judge Edith Jones wrote that actions, even insufficient ones, “indicate concern and sincerity on the part of prison officials,” and, therefore, nullify an Eighth Amendment claim. Jones, who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan, once allegedly said in a speech to the Federalist Society that “racial groups like African-Americans and Hispanics are predisposed to crime.”

The Court also rejected the plaintiffs’ ADA claim, writing that the lower court “discounted improvements that it knew had been made for the benefit of disabled prisoners.” 

“It chose to ignore that ongoing improvements and innovations gave rise to a strong legal likelihood that the Defendants were not guilty of continued deliberate indifference or disability discrimination,” Jones wrote for the majority. 

In Jackson’s ruling on the Farm Line, he also rejected the plaintiffs’ ADA claim, citing Parker.

It’s unclear what impact Parker will have on prison condition cases, said Pourciau. Much of that will depend on how courts interpret the ruling. In the Farm Line case, the judge interpreted Parker in the harshest way possible, she said. 

The plaintiffs are considering their legal options, Pourciau said. 

“The most extreme reading of the Parker decision—which we see in the VOTE v. LeBlanc ruling—would be devastating to prisoner rights litigation in the circuit, and essentially make it impossible to have institutional reform litigation,” Pourciau told The Appeal. “But that interpretation would conflict with the Supreme Court, which requires courts to look at whether Defendants responded reasonably.”

In 2020, Winn was released from prison. He says he still has nightmares about the Farm Line. 

“I just had a nightmare about the Farm Line the other night,” he said. “I was back in the field. That’s a nightmare, just being free and going back, that’s a nightmare within itself. I woke myself up.”

To those still working on the Farm Line, he urges them not to give up.

“I know it might look extremely bleak,” he said. “You just gotta pull all the strength, all your reserves, and just fight that battle, and understand that people out here care for you.”