Louisiana prisoners pay for being enslaved
12th December 2022 · 0 Comments
Incarcerated people pay high costs for phone calls, emails, video conferences, clothing, food, electronics, and hygienic products, and, in some cases, co-pays for medical care. Punishment is one thing, but deciding between food and soap is another.
As such, the financial burden placed on inmates is transferred to families and loved ones who deposit hundreds of dollars yearly in commissary accounts to keep the incarcerated dressed, fed and clean. The food served by prison staff is negligible and, according to some reports, unhealthy.
In 2019, The Marshall Project partnered with The New York Times’ newsletter “Race/Related” and presented a weeklong series on families of the incarcerated.
Every month, Telita Hayes adds nearly $200 to the commissary account for her ex-husband, William Reese, who has been in the Louisiana State Penitentiary for the past 28 years.
Each prisoner there is given three meals a day and some personal hygiene items, like soap and toothpaste. But when Reese gets hungry between meals or when his state-issued supplies run out, the commissary money buys him extra food and other necessities.
Hayes also paid $3,586 in charges for talking to him on the phone and $419 for emails.
Many families said they shell out hundreds of dollars each month to feed, clothe and stay connected to someone behind bars, paying for health care, personal hygiene items and phone calls, and other forms of communication.
Hayes said she spends an additional $200 on visits and phone calls around Christmas time. Prison is challenging enough; surviving it alone is even more challenging – especially during the holidays.
The ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) reported that the United States spends more than $80 billion annually to keep roughly 2.3 million people behind bars and anywhere from $20,000 to $50,000 annually to keep an individual in prison.
The ACLU’s scathing report, “Captive Labor: Exploitation Of Incarcerated Workers,” documents how the prison industrial complex makes millions off of the forced labor of inmates. An ACLU research report produced in collaboration with the Global Human Rights Clinic of the University of Chicago Law School examines the use of prison labor throughout state and federal prisons in the U.S.
The report, released last June, documents the harsh conditions and unfair practices, highlighting how incarcerated workers’ labor helps maintain prisons and provides vital public services. Incarcerated workers generate $2 billion in goods and $9 billion worth of prison maintenance services, according to the report.
A Prison Labor Survey of inmates found 70 percent couldn’t afford basic necessities, 64 percent were concerned about their safety when working, 70 percent received no formal training, and 76 percent were forced to work or face additional punishments like solitary confinement.
Families with an incarcerated loved one spend $2.9 billion a year on commissary accounts and phone calls, and more than half of these families are forced to go into debt to afford these costs.
Still, what can be expected of a system with the power to treat human beings as slaves or, as legislators prefer to call it, involuntary servitude.
ACLU of Louisiana Director Alanah Odoms said incarcerated workers deserve the same dignity and protections as other workers. “This includes a fair wage, training, and basic workplace safety. If states and the federal government can afford to incarcerate millions of people nationwide, they can afford to pay them fairly for their work.”
Here are some of the highlights of the ACLU report:
• At the Louisiana State Penitentiary, known as Angola, the nation’s largest maximum-security prison situated on 18,000 acres of land that was initially the site of slave plantations, incarcerated workers work field crops including cotton, corn, soybeans, and sugarcane for only two cents an hour. This agricultural work has direct roots in the Black chattel slavery of the South.
• Every person incarcerated in Angola, 74 percent of whom are Black — and most incarcerated across Louisiana — starts work in the fields, and switching jobs is difficult. Field laborers work with limited access to water, minimal rest, and no restroom facilities under the supervision of armed correctional officers on horseback.
• Workers report being placed in solitary confinement if they are unwilling or unable to perform work in the fields or if they do not work fast enough.
• Formerly incarcerated agricultural workers at Louisiana’s Angola prison report witnessing other farm workers collapse from exhaustion or dehydration while working in the fields on hot days.
• DG Foods, a poultry processing plant in Bastrop, Louisiana, avoided shutting down operations at the height of COVID-19 by relying on incarcerated laborers who faced the loss of their earned-time credits should they refuse to work.
• Louis Dreyfus Commodities, a commodities trader, purchased $2.4 million worth of corn and soybeans produced by incarcerated workers employed in the state prison industries program from 2017 to 2020, while numerous livestock auction companies purchased at least $5 million worth of livestock raised by workers incarcerated in Louisiana prisons during that same time. The livestock sold at auction on the open market later finds its way as meat sold to consumers with no indication that it originated with the labor of incarcerated workers.
• A state legislative audit of the Louisiana Prison Enterprises program found that one-third of incarcerated people working in the state prison industries program are trained for jobs that are projected to decrease in the labor market, such as garment factory work and agriculture, finding that “many…may not be learning job skills that could help them after they are released.”
The ACLU report calls for far-reaching reforms to ensure prison labor is genuinely voluntary and that incarcerated workers are paid fairly, properly trained, and able to gain transferable skills:
• Abolish exclusion clauses that allow forced labor as punishment for a crime.
• Ensure that all work in prisons is entirely voluntary by eliminating any laws and policies that punish incarcerated people who are unable or unwilling to work.
• Allow incarcerated workers the same labor protections afforded to other workers in the United
• States, including minimum wage, health and safety standards, unionization, protection from discrimination, and speedy access to redress when their rights are violated.
• Institute comprehensive safety and training programs for all work assignments in correctional institutions.
• Invest in prison work programs that provide incarcerated workers with marketable skills and training to help them find employment after release and eliminate barriers to employment after release.
Yes, prisons are necessary, and punishment for serious crimes is too.
That being said, there is a real need for more criminal justice reform. It’s really embarrassing that Louisiana is the incarceration capital of the world and that judges hand out the most punitive sentences for crimes than any other state.
However, the most egregious pattern and practice in the Louisiana penal system is the inhumane treatment of the incarcerated.
This article originally published in the December 12, 2022 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
