Women hoeing in the fields at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, back when the prison still kept women there. (Artwork by The Lens based on a photo by Winans, Louisiana State Museum)

On weekdays, quiet mornings are interrupted with the sound of loud whistles blowing and security officers screaming “work call!” at the top of their lungs. Even before guys are shipped from parish jails to the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, they’re warned that their mornings will be disturbed by these early morning calls.

For the men who work the Farm Line in the hot Louisiana sun, workdays can be filled with tedious work without modern tools, long days with little water or shade, which can sometimes cause painful cramps and injuries. 

For the second time, U.S. District Judge Brian Jackson ordered the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections to limit the agency’s use of Angola’s Farm Line workers during periods of extreme heat. “Plaintiffs have shown that incarcerated persons working on the Farm Line at LSP are at substantial risk of suffering serious harm under defendants’ current heat index, monitoring, and heat-alert practices,” he wrote in his order’s conclusion.

Jackson, a federal judge in the Middle District of Louisiana in Baton Rouge, ordered prison officials on Friday to monitor temperature and humidity levels every 30 minutes and issue a Heat Alert when temperatures reach or exceed 88 degrees Fahrenheit. The order also mandated the implementation of protective measures including access to shade, water, sunscreen, and heat appropriate clothing for those working outdoors.

Jackson had issued a preliminary injunction with similar protections from the heat last summer, in July, but the order expired in October.

Terrance Winn, 51, who spent 30 years at Angola and worked the Farm Line for 25 of them, was happy to hear of Jackson’s decision. “It made me feel jubilant,” he said. “That finally, somebody would command that people be treated with human decency.”

At the root of the federal civil-rights lawsuit are concerns about the safety and human rights of the Farm Line workers, incarcerated men at Angola who are required to perform agricultural labor in dangerously hot conditions for little or no compensation, while overseen by armed guards on horseback. Attorneys from the Promise of Justice Initiative and Rights Behind Bars, who represent the workers, had requested the temporary restraining order because of a few policy changes made by the DOC after Jackson’s first order expired in October 2024.

Recent DOC policy changes hurt field workers

The DOC had adopted a few policy changes that made life harder for Farm Line workers, PJI lawyers told the court. 

First, the DOC adopted a revised heat policy that raised the threshold for triggering safety protocols from a heat index of 88 to 91 degrees. Advocates argue the policy shift exposed workers to greater risk, allowing labor to continue under dangerously elevated temperatures before safety interventions were initiated. The DOC expert testified in a hearing last month that he had pushed for a 95-degree threshold, believing that it would be “very reasonable and safe.”

Heat index is what some describe as “feels like” temperature, because its measurement is an estimate of how the body perceives temperature and relative humidity. 

Department officials also shortened the list of medical conditions, eliminating some common conditions such as diabetes that qualified men for “duty status,” allowing them to be exempted from field work. That change was not addressed in Jackson’s recent order.

Prison officials have argued that it’s appropriate to have prisoners work in the kitchen and prison yards. Angola officials have told the court that Farm Line workers tend fields that provide vegetables to the prison cafeteria. 

But the Farm Line’s purpose is different, prisoners say. Though Angola has farm machinery that it uses, Farm Line workers pull weeds and harvest plants with bare fingers in a way that harkens back to more than a century ago, when the 18,000-acre prison operated as a plantation with enslaved people doing this work. “Right now, thousands of men and women in Louisiana are forced to work against their will,” Winn wrote in a 2019 PJI report, “Punitive by Design.”

‘You could be damn-near dead’
During time spent at Angola, Winn remembers coming home from a day on the Farm Line and suffering physical pain from laboring in the extreme heat. “My body caught a lot of cramps,” he said. One day, he cramped up and fell in the field. Back in the dorm that night, he made sick call three times in one night; medical workers gave him ibuprofen and told he was not exempt from the coming workday, he said.

When morning came, he was completely incapacitated. “I was in so much pain, dude had to push me in a wheelchair, but security still made me go in that field,” he said. 

He tried to walk out the gates. But when he could not physically continue, he was written up and sent to an isolation cell, known as The Dungeon. “You could be damn-near dead and the doctor is not going to give you duty status,” he said.  

Winn’s story illustrates how DOC’s inflexibility and its recent policy changes ignore basic science and put lives in jeopardy, workers have said. This isn’t a matter of discomfort—it’s a matter of life and death, they say. 

Jackson’s order supports that perspective, or, as he put it: “the potential harms alleged by Plaintiffs are serious and potentially life-threatening.”

Angola Farm Line photo from Middle District of Louisiana filings

The Farm Line consists of incarcerated men, many of whom are Black and serving long or life sentences, to work lengthy days in fields with minimal shade and little access to water. Human rights groups have long criticized the practice, comparing it to forced labor and raising concerns over the lack of regulatory oversight and worker protections, to prevent heat-related illness and injury.

The court’s latest ruling effectively rolls back the department’s new 91-degree threshold and reinstates the lower, 88-degree threshold for heat alerts. The order is temporary, but attorneys expect to push for more permanent reform as litigation continues.

The DOC has not yet commented publicly on the new order, though its lawyers argued against it in the hearing last month. 

This case forms part of a broader national reckoning over prison labor practices, particularly in Southern states, where extreme heat is becoming more common and prison populations are often disproportionately tasked with outdoor work. 

The plaintiffs, who include the advocacy group Voice of The Experienced (VOTE) along with seven incarcerated men, filed a broader civil-rights lawsuit in September 2023 arguing that the DOC should completely stop the practice of forced agricultural labor at Angola. The suit argues that Farm Line operations, especially during stifling Louisiana heat, violate the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which protects people from cruel and unusual punishment.

The DOC’s measly response to Jackson’s order last year illustrated that prison officials have no plans to operate the Farm Line in a humane way, plaintiffs said.

 “For a second consecutive year, the court has unequivocally condemned Angola prison for perpetuating an archaic system of physical punishment that contradicts scientific understanding and basic legal principles,” said Lydia Wright, Supervising Attorney at Rights Behind Bars. “There is no justifiable reason for Angola to continue operating the Farm Line.