There was no escaping the Farm Line, Bobby Wallace recalls.
During Wallace’s first week at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, he was sent to the prison hospital for a routine examination. Then he was assigned to work the fields.
“It was understood. After the physical, you going to work in the field,” said Wallace, 56, who spent more than 22 years at Angola.
Now, an ongoing federal court case is bringing new light to the Farm Line, which is worked by nearly every man who enters Angola.
Wallace entered Angola in the 1990s as a city guy, from Algiers. So he had no experience with farm work and often struggled to keep pace with the rest of the crew, he said. Yet when he slipped while digging canals or failed to move quickly enough, he was frequently threatened with writeups that would end up in lockdown.
“If you can’t keep up or you refuse to do the work, they threaten you with calling the truck to bring you to the dungeon,” Wallace said.
Because Farm Line workers are captive men forced to work for little or no pay under the supervision of armed guards on horseback, the practice is often described as a modern form of slavery.
Compulsory field labor, through the Farm Line, was a core part of prison operations throughout Wallace’s time at Angola. Even those who made it out of the fields could easily be reassigned to the Farm Line at any time, he said, if guards deemed that men were insubordinate or made even a minor mistake.
Wallace viewed those reassignments as part of a larger plan to meet the prison’s labor needs. “It’s a numbers game,” said If they need more people in the field, they’ll build a case on you for anything,” said Wallace, who is now keeping a close eye on the federal lawsuit, which contends that the Farm Line is unconstitutional.
In December, U.S. District Judge Brian A. Jackson certified the case, Voice of the Experienced (VOTE) vs. LeBlanc, as a class-action lawsuit, with a class made up of incarcerated men assigned to the Farm Line, including a subclass of people with disabilities.
The class certification marks a critical turning point in the case because it allows the court to address the Farm Line as a systemwide practice rather than a series of individual claims, attorneys for the incarcerated men said.
“Class certification is a major step toward protecting the constitutional rights of everyone incarcerated at Angola,” said Lydia Wright, legal director of Rights Behind Bars, who is representing the Farm Line along with lawyers from the Promise of Justice Initiative. “The state’s operation of the Farm Line is dangerous, pointless and cruel. It endangers every person incarcerated at Angola.”
Any remedy ordered in the case would also apply throughout the Farm Line, including those who may be assigned there in the future, said Wright, acknowledging the suit’s seven original named plaintiffs, who brought the case in September 2023 along with the group Voice of the Experienced, which advocates for people who are or have been incarcerated.
“Nearly every person incarcerated at Angola will be afforded relief ordered in this litigation, thanks to the seven brave class representatives who brought this lawsuit on behalf of thousands of others similarly situated,” she said.
Addressing safety, then moving to the core of the matter
In rulings that started in July 2024, Jackson ordered officials at the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections to “correct the glaring deficiencies in their heat-related policies.” To inform that decision and other subsequent rulings, Jackson has visited Angola and read through hundreds, perhaps thousands, pages of heat-related policies and related reports.
To date, Jackson’s rulings have focused largely on immediate dangers faced by the Farm Line, particularly exposure to extreme temperatures above an 88-degree “heat index,” a measure that incorporates both temperature and humidity.
In the wide-open fields, the heat could be oppressive, Wallace recalled. “I had to put a towel on my head, put water on my towel to keep my towel wet,” he said. “My skin was bubbling from the heat burns. I got dizzy out there. And my vision — you could see the heat in the distance dancing.”
To mitigate the heat’s effects, Jackson ordered that the DOC implement specific safety measures, including the provision of water, regular breaks in a shaded area, and access to sunscreen and protective clothing.
But Jackson has not yet addressed the lawsuit’s central contention: that the Farm Line is unconstitutional. That issue will be addressed in the five-day trial that started this morning, on Tuesday, February 3, in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana in Baton Rouge.
During the trial, the Farm Line’s very existence will be called into question, Wright said.
“The certified classes challenge the Louisiana State Penitentiary’s operation of the Farm Line, an unlawful, degrading, and dangerous disciplinary practice through which the state compels incarcerated men at Angola to labor under conditions designed to replicate aspects of chattel slavery,” Wright said.
The Farm Line constitutes cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Constitution’s Eighth Amendment, said Wright, who quickly summarized the suit’s arguments about that matter:
1) “Defendants force men to labor on the Farm Line under high heat conditions that expose them to a substantial risk of serious physical harm without adequate mitigation to abate that risk,” Wright said.
2) “Defendants use the Farm Line to punish men by subjecting them to debasing, inhumane conditions reminiscent of chattel slavery, thereby stripping them of their fundamental human dignity, deviating from contemporary standards of decency, and adding degradation on top of their sentence to hard labor,” Wright said.
Wallace, who arrived at Angola and was sent to the fields at age 21, felt constantly humiliated by Farm Line overseers about his inability to keep up with their demands. At times, “just to survive,” he felt like he was being forced to reshape himself, as someone only valued for what he could accomplish in the fields, he said.
Disability and psychological claims
The lawsuit also alleges that the Farm Line violates federal disability laws including the American Disabilities Act and Section 504 of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act, because prison officials fail to properly accommodate people who could sustain grave injuries or die if exposed to heat.
“The Farm Line violates the ADA and Section 504 because Defendants fail to reasonably accommodate people with the disability of impaired thermoregulation who are forced to work on the Farm Line, and because Defendants fail to adequately administer their policies and procedures to protect people with impaired thermoregulation,” Wright said.
Medical emergencies, known as SDEs, from the Farm Line are common during the summer. When the heat is high, Angola medical staff regularly receives four to five SDEs from the Farm Line every day, Wright said.
The Department of Corrections lawyers have argued that the Farm Line is necessary to produce food for the prison kitchen. In response, the Farm Line’s lawyers argue that the daily labor, which includes picking grass by hand and watering plants using a bucket and a cup, is deliberately performed manually, using unnecessarily primitive methods.
“Although LSP has modern farming machinery, LSP officials force men on the Farm Line to plant, water, weed, and harvest crops by hand,” Wright said.
Crews of mostly Black men with white armed overseers, working on the grounds of a former slave plantation also perpetuate deep historical harms, Wright said. “At the core of the ‘negative’ social connotations of the Farm Line is its historical connection to slavery.”
Wallace felt like he was following the path of his enslaved ancestors “in this new slave activity,” he said. “It felt degrading to me,” he said. “I feel like Angola took a strong piece of me.”
Wright has heard that sentiment repeatedly from her clients. “Class members are aware of the Farm Line’s connection to slavery,” she said, “and they experience dignitary and psychological harm as a result.”
With this week’s trial comes the possibility that the Farm Line could end. That carries emotional weight for Wallace, who sees the trial itself — and its chance of legal victory — as a win for the powerless workers and those who hold the keys to Angola.
“It’s like David beating Goliath the giant in the Bible,” he said.
