{"id":223,"date":"2026-05-29T20:11:20","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T20:11:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/smartmovinghome.com\/?p=223"},"modified":"2026-05-29T20:11:20","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T20:11:20","slug":"federal-judge-upholds-infamously-brutal-farm-labor-at-angola-prison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/smartmovinghome.com\/?p=223","title":{"rendered":"Federal Judge Upholds Infamously Brutal Farm Labor at Angola Prison"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Truthout is an indispensable resource for activists, movement leaders and workers everywhere. Please make this work possible with a <\/span><\/i>quick donation<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Read more ICE and Prison Guards Retaliate Against Detainees and Protestors at Delaney Hall<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

In a ruling that is notably silent on Louisiana\u2019s history of slavery and white supremacy, a federal judge sided with the Louisiana State Penitentiary on May 26, rejecting a request to end the prison\u2019s notorious practice of forcing groups of predominately Black prisoners to perform grueling farm labor on the grounds of a former slave plantation. <\/p>\n

Commonly known as Angola, named after a plantation which itself was named after the homeland of the enslaved people who labored there in the 19th<\/sup> century, the prison and its farm are infamous for their brutal conditions. The prison has long forced incarcerated people to spend long hours picking vegetables by hand as a disciplinary measure that civil rights groups argue is cruel. With its \u201cfarm line\u201d of predominately Black men laboring under the hot sun and white gaze of gun-toting guards on horseback, the Angola prison farm has long served as a potent symbol of slavery living on in modern prison systems. <\/p>\n

Ever since current and former prisoners filed a lawsuit against the prison farm in 2023, the court has issued multiple orders requiring that prison officials take steps to protect incarcerated laborers from dehydration and injury from picking crops in temperatures that regularly exceed 100 degrees. Medical emergencies in the fields of Angola are common during summer, with incarcerated workers suffering from heat stroke and other serious harms, to the plaintiffs. <\/p>\n

However, District Court Judge Brian A. Jackson wrote in his that he was constrained from forcing the Louisiana State Penitentiary to make lasting changes to its infamous farm due to a recent decision by a higher court in a separate case over alleged medical neglect at the prison.<\/p>\n

Donald Arbuthnot, an organizer who was formerly incarcerated at Angola, said his time on the so-called farm line gave him a glimpse of what Black people experienced before emancipation from chattel slavery. <\/p>\n

\u201cI saw the images on the TV during the civil rights movement, but I experienced what my grandparents and great grandparents went through when I entered the farm line at Angola,\u201d Arbuthnot told reporters on Wednesday. \u201cTo this day, I don\u2019t understand how we were able to deal with what we dealt with. I guess it\u2019s the resilience of people like us, after all we have gone through \u2026 to get to where we are today.\u201d <\/p>\n

Formerly a volunteer teacher and pre-release tutor for fellow prisoners, Arbuthnot is now a member of Voice of the Experienced, a group of formerly incarcerated organizers that joined current prisoners in filing the lawsuit against the state prison system and the farm line in 2023. As the case wound through the courts, prisoners and civil rights groups argued the Angola farm violates the Constitution\u2019s ban on cruel and unusual punishment by recreating antebellum slavery on land that historically hosted a violent plantation-turned prison camp named Angola. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey still don\u2019t want to let go of it,\u201d said Terrance Williams, an advocate and former prisoner at Angola, in an interview with Truthout. <\/em>\u201cThey are holding on to this slavery replica, because that really all it is \u2014 it\u2019s just a model of slavery they are holding on to.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cThey don\u2019t teach these guys to do farm work, they just say go pick vegetables,\u201d said Cecelia Trenticosta Kappel, an attorney at the Promise of Justice Initiative, an organization that represented the plaintiffs, in an interview. \u201cIt\u2019s a means of punishment by racial terror.\u201d <\/p>\n

Judge Jackson issued his first order to the Louisiana state prison system in 2024 after the plaintiffs filed for an emergency injunction to protect incarcerated farm workers from record summer heat. Jackson directed officials to \u201ccorrect the glaring deficiencies in their heat-related policies,\u201d including a policy that allowed work to continue in the fields to continue under temperatures exceeding 103 degrees, a threshold that presents a known danger to human health.<\/p>\n

In a subsequent 2025 order, Jackson told prison officials that the men on the farm line \u201cmust be treated with human decency.\u201d As a result of Jackson\u2019s temporary orders \u2014 all which expire after 90 days \u2014 the prison installed shade structures and agreed to give workers water to drink at all times. Before the order, Arbuthnot said workers did not receive enough water and were forced to drink from shared cans. Workers also now get a 15-minute break for every hour of labor in the fields. <\/p>\n

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However, Kappel warned that these improvements could be rolled back at any time, and the plaintiffs only recourse would be to file another lawsuit. <\/p>\n

In his most recent ruling, Jackson noted that prison officials failed to change policy to lower the heat threshold for stopping work in the fields down from a whopping 113 degrees, demonstrating \u201cdeliberate indifference\u201d to the health of the prisoners and a likely violation of the Constitution. However, Jackson wrote that he is constrained by a recent ruling by the right-leaning Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in a separate case, Parker vs. Hooper, <\/em>which involves allegations of medical abuse and neglect filed by prisoners at Angola. <\/p>\n

\u201cBefore Parker,<\/em> the Court would have found Defendants liable under the Eighth Amendment for acting with deliberate indifference to the health and safety of incarcerated persons\u201d on the Farm Line, Jackson wrote. \u201cUnder the Parker<\/em> ruling, however, the Court is constrained to find that Defendants\u2019 implementation of remedial measures negates a finding of subjective deliberate indifference, even though these remedial measures are inadequate to cure the constitutional violation.\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words, the new legal standard set by the Fifth Circuit shields prison officials from liability as long as they take steps toward improving conditions for incarcerated people, even if those measures do not go far enough. <\/p>\n

Jackson\u2019s ruling this week does not address the plaintiffs\u2019 main claim: that the prison farm itself is an affront to human dignity that should be considered an unconstitutional form of cruel and unusual punishment. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s bizarre that the court would not even mention the word \u2018plantation\u2019 in this decision,\u201d Kappel said. <\/p>\n

Former prisoner Chadarius Morehead told the court that working on the farm line made him feel like he was letting his ancestors down by participating in slavery, the same system they fought so hard to abolish. <\/p>\n

Kappel said prisoners testified about having nightmares of slavery and lynchings after working in the fields at Angola.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo force people to reenact slavery, especially on a prison that sits on former plantation, and is named after the plantation, and in fact is named after the people who were enslaved there, and using that as punishment and using that as a mean of \u2018breaking in\u2019 new prisoners \u2026 that violates the Eighth Amendment,\u201d Kappel said. <\/p>\n

Williams said he is deeply disappointed but not surprised by the ruling. <\/p>\n

\u201cI understand white supremacy, and I understand they aren\u2019t going against each other,\u201d he said. \u201cThe system isn\u2019t really going to go against the system, so they see that you got injured or harmed, but knowing one of their own did it, they overlook it.\u201d <\/p>\n

Read more Netanyahu Says Israeli Military to Take Over 70 Percent of Gaza<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The judge\u2019s ruling rejected a request to end the prison\u2019s use of grueling farm labor as a disciplinary measure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":222,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"yoast_head":"\nFederal Judge Upholds Infamously Brutal Farm Labor at Angola Prison - Smart Moving Home<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/smartmovinghome.com\/?p=223\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Federal Judge Upholds Infamously Brutal Farm Labor at Angola Prison - Smart Moving Home\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The judge\u2019s ruling rejected a request to end the prison\u2019s use of grueling farm labor as a disciplinary measure.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/smartmovinghome.com\/?p=223\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Smart Moving Home\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-05-29T20:11:20+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/smartmovinghome.com\\\/?p=223#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/smartmovinghome.com\\\/?p=223\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/smartmovinghome.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/ec0d70042821fd684a174c8d0e8becfa\"},\"headline\":\"Federal Judge Upholds Infamously Brutal Farm Labor at Angola Prison\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-05-29T20:11:20+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/smartmovinghome.com\\\/?p=223\"},\"wordCount\":1228,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/smartmovinghome.com\\\/?p=223#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/smartmovinghome.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/05\\\/b01f6aba91791bb8b6246af305c860aa.jpg\",\"articleSection\":[\"Interesting\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/smartmovinghome.com\\\/?p=223#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/smartmovinghome.com\\\/?p=223\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/smartmovinghome.com\\\/?p=223\",\"name\":\"Federal Judge Upholds Infamously Brutal Farm Labor at Angola Prison - 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