By Andrew Seeder
This article is part of a five-part series on prison labor.
No image draws a more obvious connection between chattel slavery and mass incarceration in the United States than that of Black men toiling in fields under the watch of armed overseers on horseback at Angola, an antebellum plantation turned plantation prison. From Angola in Louisiana to the Cummins Unit in Arkansas, this scene plays out on prison farms across the country daily.
Today, at least 650 prisons across 46 states use incarcerated labor for agricultural production, with over 30,000 incarcerated people working on farms or in food-related positions. They often work the same fields that enslaved people worked in the 19th century and under similar conditions: blistering heat, minimal sustenance, no wages, and no rights.
Incarcerated men working the fields at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, commonly known as Angola (Photo via National Museum of African American History and Culture)
The Consistent Exception
In 1860, two billion pounds of cotton were harvested by enslaved people in the South, representing 61% of all national exports at the time. Cotton, rice, sugarcane, tobacco, and corn were the main commodities harvested by enslaved people before the Civil War. Their stolen labor made the U.S. a rich nation.
Following the Civil War, Southern states were in a fight for their survival, and they received a negotiated gift in the Thirteenth Amendment: the permission to enslave people as punishment for crime. They quickly moved to enact Black Codes, which applied only to Black people and criminalized aspects of everyday life, such as unemployment. In doing so, lawmakers quickly moved to criminalize, arrest, and incarcerate formerly enslaved people to force them back to work through the notoriously brutal practice of “convict leasing”, by which states leased incarcerated people to private businesses and individuals for their labor.
Through these racist and unjust laws, Southern states used contrived crimes to continue slavery under a new guise, renewing a steady supply of cheap labor for the private sector. But this concept soon soured with the public as it undermined wages for free laborers, and in 1935, Congress passed the Ashurst-Sumners Act to prohibit the interstate sale of goods produced by incarcerated labor. However, the Act had a few exceptions, among them was agriculture. So when “convict leasing” formally fell out of favor with the public in the 1940s, governments began to use prison labor directly on their own farms.
But by the 1970s, as the prison population boomed, private entities renewed their efforts to gain access to cheap prison labor. In 1979, Congress created the Prison Industry Enhancement Certification Program, which required that incarcerated people working for private entities be paid prevailing wages. Among the exceptions was once again agriculture, preserving the carceral system’s relationship to antebellum slavery.
Dangerous Working Conditions
Working conditions on prison farms are notoriously grueling, particularly in the South, where temperatures can top 100 degrees and heat strokes have been commonplace. Angola, where incarcerated men pick cotton, okra, potatoes, and other crops in grueling heat, is at the center of a lawsuit alleging that the “farm line” violates the U.S. Constitution’s protections against cruel and unusual punishment. Patrick Jones, who is incarcerated at Angola, has worked the farm line for years and explained, “I never had a seat except for the ground. I never had shade except for the corn and the okra.”
While the case continues, a temporary restraining order was recently ordered in response to the case demanding that the prison take extra steps to protect incarcerated people from the heat. But even with the most basic protections against the heat, Patrick and the other people on the farm line are still at risk. Compared to other industries, agricultural workers are five times more likely to be killed at work. In addition to acute risks of injury or death while working, there are also serious health risks associated with chronic exposure to pesticides and other toxins.
A Food System Reliant on Underpaid Workers
Despite the dangers of agricultural work in (and out) of prisons, incarcerated agriculture workers are often paid nothing to as much as just a few cents an hour for their labor. When corporations can avoid federal labor regulations to pay wages far below market rates, they can reap higher profit margins.
Over the past century, prison labor has become deeply entrenched in the U.S. food system. A recent investigation by the Associated Press revealed a complex web of hundreds of popular food brands and retailers — from Cargill to Tyson Foods — sourcing agricultural products from prisons. These products can include fruits, vegetables, meats, dairy, and even specialty items. In fact, smaller businesses also rely on prison labor, often for artisanal or niche products like goat cheese. Ultimately, these foods produced with prison labor end up on supermarket shelves without clear labeling or consumer awareness.
Source: Prison Agriculture Lab
The role of prison labor in agriculture is only expanding as other cheap labor sources wane. In 2022, over 40% of farmworkers in the U.S. were undocumented, a population that similarly reports low wages, wage theft, dangerous working conditions, and retaliation for raising concerns. The recent ramp-up of anti-immigration sentiments and policies has pushed these workers further into the shadows and exacerbated the staff shortages that farms have been experiencing for decades. Some of these farms are turning to prison labor to fill gaps, increasing the number of incarcerated people working on farms.
The Point is Cruelty
Correctional agencies often list four reasons for this brutality: vocational training, rehabilitation, idleness reduction, and revenue generation. There are some regional differences in how these are used, with the South relying heavily on revenue generation and idleness reduction, while others tend to prioritize vocational training and rehabilitation. Researchers at the Prison Agriculture Lab offer a historical explanation for this regional difference, noting that the South is “a region built on plantation agriculture with chattel slavery and prison slavery in the form of convict leasing, and on incarcerating more Black people than all other states combined.”
Yet, none of these reasons justify the abuse and exploitation of incarcerated workers, particularly those in the fields. In fact, even those that are consistent with stated correctional aims, like rehabilitation, mirror rationales used during antebellum slavery when enslavers argued that performing hard labor conveyed a work ethic that Black people inherently lacked and was thus to their benefit.
In reality, the point of all this is often plain cruelty and dominance. In Texas, incarcerated men pick cotton at an economic loss to the state. Forced field work is intentionally used to conjure memories of slavery in incarcerated people that help officers assert control. Jorge Renaud, who spent 27 years incarcerated in Texas, recalled, “That’s how it goes in prison. There are house hands and field hands – not working is not an option. The former is a prize for obedience and minding your own business. The second is punishment for misbehavior or having a bad attitude. Either way, your body and labor belong to the state.” And Texas’s cotton operation is not the only one operating at a loss.
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Prison labor in agriculture illustrates the carceral system’s most obvious connection to slavery, among the many that exist. Legal carveouts, lack of transparency, and corporate greed perpetuate it. Thankfully, public awareness and criticism are growing, prompting consumers to boycott brands, incarcerated people to pursue legal challenges, and corporations to change their sourcing practices. However, addressing this injustice will require a multifaceted approach that most importantly includes ending the exceptions made in prison-related labor regulations and laws for agricultural work, starting with the Thirteenth Amendment, so that we can ensure that all people have the basic human right of being protected from slavery.