As daily temperatures hit record highs across much of the South, a federal judge has taken an unusual step, challenging the treatment of mostly Black incarcerated workers in the fields.

Beneath the blazing summer sun on a former slave plantation, Lamont Gross and fellow prisoners stooped in long rows, picking vegetables by hand under the watchful eyes of armed guards on horseback. He said breaks were short and infrequent, with nothing to protect workers from the heat.

“I saw guys collapse,” Gross said of his days on the so-called farm line at Louisiana’s state penitentiary, where men work for pennies an hour or nothing at all and face punishment if they refuse. “There were dudes that got heat stroke. There were dudes with underlying conditions, older or had some sort of disability, but they had to go out there, too.”

As daily temperatures hit record highs across much of the South, a federal judge took an unusual step, challenging the treatment of mostly Black incarcerated workers in the fields.

America’s largest maximum-security prison, known as Angola, sits on 18,000 acres. It was once a patchwork of cotton fields where, historians note, even enslaved pregnant women and young children worked from dawn to dusk during the busiest and hottest harvesting months. Prisoners have toiled on the same farm lines since after emancipation often without shade, adequate work breaks or even sunscreen.

  • ALQ@lemmy.world
    67·
    4 months ago

    the state warned that shutting down the farm line once the heat index hits 88 degrees Fahrenheit (31.1 degrees Celsius), as requested by plaintiffs in their emergency filing, would “open the floodgates” to cease work “in any institution across the South.”

    Maybe - and just hear me out - maybe that’s not a bad thing if your work is all slave labor. ¯\(ツ)/¯

  • Adderbox76@lemmy.caEnglish
    48·
    4 months ago

    And this is why the for-profit american justice system isn’t about rehabilitation.

    A supply of slave labour requires recidivism.

    America is barbaric.

    • NegativeInf@lemmy.world
      4·
      4 months ago

      Is this a for-profit prison if it’s state owned? Are they actually making profit? Is this just so they can cosplay as slave holders?

      • Adderbox76@lemmy.caEnglish
        15·
        4 months ago

        I believe even state owned prisons can “lease” out their prisoners for labour in order to bring extra money into their budgetary coffers. Though I could be wrong.

        • catloaf@lemm.eeEnglish
          10·
          4 months ago

          You are correct. Prison labor is often used for things like government production (military uniforms, office supplies, state license plates) and private industry (call centers, telephone 411 services).

  • CazzoBuco@lemmy.world
    40·
    4 months ago

    “Oh we no longer have slaves, we call them prisoners now and everyone is just okay with it.”

  • terwn43lp@lemmy.world
    11·
    4 months ago

    we always say how cruel North Korea is, meanwhile in America:

    you can downvote me but we still have the largest prison population in the world, must be nice to live in ignorance

  • Wahots@pawb.social
    10·
    4 months ago

    My uncle saw it firsthand. He saw the chain gangs clearing out vines in the south while the prisoners got lit up by hornets (and couldn’t move since everyone was chained together). My uncle asked the fat, white prison guard if they were going to get bug killer for the prisoners. The guard laughed and said they will, in three days. He deliberately was making an example out of them.

    They were the worst of the worst- comprised entirely of murderers, pedophiles, and rapists…but even then (late 70s-80s), it seemed cruel and unusual. I think the heat has made people cruel to each other down there. Monsters, even.