Incarcerated laborers on Angola’s Farm Line face “substantial risk of injury or death” during extreme heat, a federal judge ruled this week, ordering corrections officials to make policy changes to “preserve human health and safety.”
The ACLU sued the state after it moved children to the former death row unit at the notorious Angola prison. But a court filing says the kids have faced abuse in their new facility, too.
The state’s youth incarceration agency entered into a two-year contract with the Jackson Parish Jail to lock up children—some of whom have been incarcerated at Angola, the state’s most notorious prison.
One boy detained at Louisiana’s Jackson Parish Correctional Center said children were maced and then forced to sit outside for hours.
State officials have appealed a federal judge’s removal order and are continuing their fight to lock up children on the grounds of the maximum security prison.
The state argues there would be a “near certainty” of “serious bodily injury” to children, staff, and the public if kids are transferred out of the prison.
Children in the former death row unit at Angola, one of the nation’s most infamous prisons, have been locked in solitary confinement, shackled while they eat and play, and attacked by guards.
With heat indexes in the area regularly hitting triple digits, children incarcerated at Louisiana’s Angola prison have been locked in windowless cells for nearly 24 hours a day. One medical expert says the conditions put lives at risk.
Last year, the Louisiana Office of Juvenile Justice began transferring children to Angola, the state’s most notorious prison. Since then, kids say they’ve suffered through horrific conditions and routine mistreatment.
On Election Day, voters in Alabama, Louisiana, Oregon, Tennessee, and Vermont will decide whether to close loopholes in their state constitutions allowing the forced labor of incarcerated people.
An upcoming court ruling could decide the fate of a plan to detain “problematic youth” at a facility that previously housed prisoners awaiting execution.
Former Louisiana Supreme Court Chief Justice Bernette Johnson’s fiery dissents on mass incarceration and sentencing in America’s most carceral state garnered international attention. But the rise of the first Black woman on the court was characterized by one battle after another with the Deep South’s white power structure.
The state is sending virus-positive people to Angola prison—but those numbers aren’t reported on the Department of Corrections website.
Criminal justice advocates have called Camp J at the Louisiana State Penitentiary ‘a dungeon.’ Now it’s housing prisoners who have been diagnosed with COVID-19.
‘We are still packed in like sardines,’ writes Fate Winslow, who’s serving a life sentence. ‘The prison doesn’t supply anything for us.’
A judge excluded a confession that exonerated defendants in one trial related to a Delaware prison uprising, but a pair of defendants were nonetheless acquitted, promising further problems for prosecutors.
With Mercedes Montagnes of the Promise of Justice Initiative.
Trial begins in class action suit alleging medical neglect by Louisiana State Penitentiary.
Ronald Brooks was helping plan a prison strike when he was abruptly transferred to a new prison hours away.
People incarcerated at Angola want opportunities for education instead of hard labor in the fields.