On Tuesday, lawyers for Angola Prison Farm Line workers went back to court, as they did last year, asking for relief from what they allege are cruel, hot, and unusual conditions in the fields of the Louisiana State Penitentiary.
Last summer, U.S. District Judge Brian Jackson, from the Middle District of Louisiana, found that the prison had “glaring deficiencies in their heat-related policies,” and ordered the prison to provide more protections for Farm Line workers, including access to shade, water, sunscreen, and protective gear.
That order expired in October of last year. Since then, the state Department of Public Safety and Corrections has implemented new policies that actually make conditions on the Farm Line more dangerous for workers in the heat, lawyers for the prisoners argue.
Specifically, a recently implemented DOC policy raised the heat-index threshold for when the prison issues a “heat alert,” triggering extra precautions for people on the Farm Line.
A heat-index temperature measures temperature and humidity. Previously, the threshold was previously 88 degrees. Last October, the department raised it to 91.
In court filings, prison officials said that they made the shift after consulting with expert witnesses hired by DOC in connection with the lawsuit, who cited guidance from the National Weather Service and National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.
Lawyers for the Farm Line workers argue the change has no scientific basis, and are urging Jackson to issue an emergency order to reverse that threshold increase. They are also demanding that the prison monitor temperature more frequently, utilize a more accurate heat-measurement system for workers laboring in the full sun, further expand the medications and medical conditions that qualify a prisoner for “Heat Protection Duty Status,” and abandon a long-standing policy by the Department that heat precautions are only implemented between May 1 and October 31.
DOC lawyer showcases shade wagon and pavilion
Lawyers for the prison pushed back on the allegations that they have not done enough to protect Farm Line workers from the heat, saying shade and water are widely available, and that prison officials have already sufficiently revised the list of medication and conditions that qualify someone to stay out of the field on certain days, on what’s called Heat Protective Duty Status.
In court on Tuesday, Andrew Blanchfield, an attorney for the DOC, displayed photographs of mobile “shade wagons” — 20-foot long, open-roofed trailers with water coolers and benches positioned along the exterior — that they claim are placed throughout the Farm Line, allowing prisoners to sit and drink water during their breaks. Another photograph showed a prototype “shade pavilion,” a 24-square-foot covered concrete area with fans and running water.
The prison has one pavilion with plans to build six more, said Blanchfield, turning to the judge. “How can they possibly contend that we’re indifferent here?” he asked.
Yet during some breaks, there are no shade wagons nearby, said Jeremey Benjamin, a lawyer representing the prisoners, who noted that the partially covered benches extend outside of the covered wagon area.
“It’s a hot bench,” Benjamin said. “You’re sitting in the sun on a ‘shade wagon.’”
Though Jackson did not make a ruling at the conclusion of the hearing, he agreed with Benjamin that benches placed in the middle of the wagon would make more sense, because they were more likely to be in the shade.
Jackson also seemed particularly troubled by the DOC’s decision to raise the heat index threshold, “I wonder, frankly, if we would be here had your clients simply maintained the 88-degree temperature standard,” Jackson said, criticizing prison officials for acting “arbitrarily and unilaterally” in making the decision.
Blanchfield objected to the description of the decision as “arbitrary.”
“Arbitrary is my word,” Jackson responded. “I’m not going to argue with you about my words.”
DOC descriptions don’t match reality, Farm Line workers say
Some Farm Line workers dispute the DOC’s assertion that shade and water is widely available. Farm Line worker Evans Tutt claimed in a declaration that he recently suffered heat-related symptoms on the Farm Line, but was denied access to medical care.
Tutt, 40, a two-time cancer survivor, arrived at Angola in February of this year and was quickly assigned to the Farm Line. Earlier this month, while harvesting collard greens, he began “to feel nauseated and dizzy,”
“I had been sweating a lot but at that point my sweat dried up, and I was no longer sweating,” Tutt wrote.
That day, Tutt asserts, there was no access to shade nor water.
“There was no tent or shade trailer out on the Farm Line that day,” Tutt wrote. “In the morning shift, they had no cups for us to drink water. In the afternoon shift, we ran out of water. They have not handed out sunscreen on the Farm Line since I’ve been at Angola.”
Tutt, fearing he was dehydrated, made a “self-declared emergency” to see a medical provider, and informed prison staff that he was on Heat-Protection Duty Status. Still, he was never visited by medical staff that day.
At the hearing, Blanchfield seemed to dismiss Tutt’s account. “If Mr. Tutts lost his cup he can ask for another one,” he said.
Tuesday’s hearing was part of a broader proposed class-action lawsuit, filed in 2023, that asks the judge to end Angola’s Farm Line altogether. The suit was brought by incarcerated Farm Line workers and the advocacy organization Voice of the Experienced, which has members inside the penitentiary.
The Farm Line is designed to degrade and demoralize prisoners with brutal and meaningless tasks, such as picking grass by hand and watering fields using a 5-gallon bucket and styrofoam cup, lawyers allege. Some prisoners are not compensated at all for their labor; those who are can earn as little as two cents an hour.
The operation has historical roots in — and continues to resemble — work done by enslaved people on the same land where the prison now sits, the plaintiffs contend.