Incarcerated men forced to work the fields on the “Farm Line” at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola are once again urging a federal judge to force the state Department of Public Safety and Corrections to provide more protection from the brutal summer heat.
A court order last year mandated some protections for Farm Line workers, who labor for little or no compensation. In response, state officials made few meaningful improvements to conditions. This summer, newly instituted policies could make things even worse, lawyers for Farm Line workers allege.
The broader legal case dates back to 2023, when the group Voice of the Experienced (VOTE) along with eight men incarcerated at Angola filed a proposed class-action lawsuit challenging the very constitutionality of the Farm Line, which they argue is rooted in the prison’s racist history and is intended to dehumanize and degrade prisoners, most of them Black, many of whom are descendants of enslaved people.
“Two cents an hour, eight hours a day, five days a week. That is the pay that’s decided makes us human and not slaves,” Terrance Winn told a U.S. Senate committee last year. “Those two cents never made me feel better than how I know my ancestors felt.”
If prisoners refuse to work, they can be put in solitary confinement or forfeit good time or any incentive wages. The tasks can be pointless such as digging and refilling holes or “goose-picking” – pulling blades of grass by hand.
“The field is back-breaking work,” Winn told the Senate committee during a hearing focused on prison labor. “Every day we would walk for miles in excessively hot weather and work, sometimes bent over on our knees, without breaks for hours … I was forced to dig ditches. I was forced to cut the levee with a hoe while officers on horses looked over us holding rifles.”
Last May, lawyers from the nonprofits Promise of Justice Initiative and Rights Behind Bars filed emergency motions on behalf of VOTE and people forced to do agricultural work, with hopes of getting immediate relief from the summer heat. They asked Brian Jackson, a federal judge in Baton Rouge, to halt the Farm Line’s work any time the heat index rose above 88 degrees.
Jackson, who sits in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana, ended up ordering state officials to “take immediate measures to correct the glaring deficiencies in their heat-related policies,” by providing workers with regular access to shade, rest, sunscreen, and appropriate equipment.
New policies further endanger Farm Line workers, lawyers contend
But Jackson blasted the state for slow-walking the implementation of his order, and called their efforts to improve conditions — including the purchase of a single 10×10 tent for shaded breaks — “grossly insufficient.”
His temporary order expired in the fall. Since then state officials have instituted new procedures, which in some cases pose even greater dangers for prisoners working in the summer heat, lawyers for the Farm Line say.
In October, for instance, the DOC amended its heat policy, to increase the temperature that prompts an official heat alert. For years, any time the heat index reached 88 degrees, officials issued heat emergencies, triggering regulations that made water and ice available every 30 minutes and required rest breaks of at least 15 minutes after 45 minutes of work.
But last fall, the DOC amended its policy, raising the heat index threshold to 91 degrees. Heat index measures the combined effects of temperature and humidity on the human body.
In defending their decision to raise the threshold, DOC officials pointed to the National Weather Service classification of heat indexes that suggests that a 91-degree heat index is when individuals need to use “extreme caution” to prevent sunstroke, heat cramps and heat exhaustion, as noted by an expert witnesses in the DOC’s defense in this case.
Lawyers for the Farm Line workers note that the NWS chart explicitly notes those values were devised for shady conditions, while most of the Farm Line work takes place in the sun.
The department also removed some conditions, including diabetes, from the list of medical conditions that qualify prisoners for “heat-protection duty status,” allowing them to leave the fields in extreme heat, or never go in the first place once the temperature reaches a certain heat index.
In a court filing last week, prisoners urged Jackson to order the prison to reinstate the 88-degree heat-alert threshold, increase the frequency of the DOC’s temperature monitoring, and expand the list of medications and conditions that qualify Farm Line workers for heat-protection duty status.
The decision to increase the heat-alert threshold is “absurd” and “without any scientific basis,” said Lydia Wright, a lawyer with Rights Behind Bars who is representing the prisoners. The DOC’s ostensible fixes to the Farm Line are nothing but “litigation posturing,” she said.
“The state claims it has made the Farm Line safer over the course of this lawsuit,” Wright said. “But it’s all a smoke screen. The Farm Line is no safer today than it was a decade ago, or a century ago.”
The DOC did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
‘Institutional inertia’
Already last week, the National Weather Service at the False River Regional Airport in New Roads reported several times that the heat index reached or surpassed 91 degrees. The False River airport is about an hour drive from Angola; its measurements are used by prison officials to declare a heat emergency.
But it’s unclear if the DOC issued any heat emergencies that week, because it lies outside the DOC’s usual heat-measurement season. The DOC’s heat policy only requires the prison to measure the temperature between May 1 and October 20 — even if it appears likely that the heat index in April might exceed the heat-emergency protocol threshold.
The date range is arbitrary, lawyers for Farm Line workers argue, and put prisoners at risk on hot days that fall outside the selected calendar period. “Heat protections should be mandatory whenever there is an elevated risk of heat stress, regardless of the date,” they wrote.
Department of Corrections medical director Randy Lavespere acknowledged in a deposition that the timeframe is the result of “institutional inertia.”
“To be honest with you, it’s been a set timeframe for years, and I think it’s just been, you know, routinely adopted,” Lavespere said.
If it got “incredibly hot” at Angola outside of the timeframe, he said, he believed that “the administrations that are over these facilities would do the right thing.” But prison policy does not mandate that heat be considered until May.
Beyond the too-narrow timeframe, the DOC’s heat policy presents other problems, say Farm Line lawyers, who argue that officials aren’t measuring temperatures and humidity often enough and are using a measurement tool that doesn’t take into account the effects of direct sunlight.
Between May and October, when the protocol is in effect, prison officials only measure the heat index once every two hours — resulting in dangerously long delays for heat alerts, which aren’t implemented until long after temperatures have passed the heat-index threshold, lawyers argue.
Also, since most Farm Line labor is done in direct sunlight, the prison should not rely on heat-index measurements, which are taken in the shade, the lawyers say. The National Weather Service is explicit that its heat-charts are meant for shady conditions and warns that if a person is exposed to direct sunlight, “the heat index value can be increased by up to 15°F.”
To be more accurate, the prison should be using a Wet Bulb Globe Temperature (WGBT) monitor that takes into account temperature, humidity, wind speed, sun angle and cloud cover, Farm Line lawyers suggest.
As part of their filing, Farm Line lawyers are urging the judge to appoint an expert to monitor and record the WBGT on the Farm Line, and to consult with the court about the prison’s heat policies.
In his deposition, Lavespere, the DOC medical director, was asked whether the prison would consider the impacts of direct sun when determining appropriate heat-alert thresholds next time they reviewed the policy.
From his response, it seemed that the DOC is unlikely to shift its measurements voluntarily.
“To be honest with you, I’d have to say it depends on how this court case comes out,” Lavespere said.