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angola prison
UN Report Urges End to Forced US Prison Labor—a 'Contemporary Form of Slavery'
One of the U.N. experts who compiled the report after visiting the U.S. earlier this year said its findings "point to the critical need for comprehensive reform."
Sep 28, 2023
A report published Thursday by United Nations human rights experts condemns systemic racism in the U.S. criminal justice system and policing, while describing "appalling" prison conditions and decrying forced unpaid convict labor as a "contemporary form of slavery."
The U.N. International Independent Expert Mechanism to Advance Racial Justice and Equality in the Context of Law Enforcement report follows a visit to the U.S. earlier this year by a team of human rights experts. The U.N. officials collected testimonies from 133 affected people, visited five prisons and jails, and held meetings with advocacy groups and numerous government and police officials in Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York City, and Washington, D.C.
"In all the cities we went to, we heard dozens of heartbreaking testimonies on how victims do not get justice or redress. This is not new, and it's unacceptable," Tracie Keesee, an expert member of the mechanism, said in a statement. "This is a systemic issue that calls for a systemic response."
"Law enforcement and criminal justice institutions in the United States share and reproduce values, attitudes, and stereotypes of U.S. society and institutions. These must be reformed."
The experts found that "racism in the U.S.—a legacy of slavery, the slave trade, and 100 years of legalized apartheid that followed slavery's abolition—continues to exist today in the form of racial profiling, police killings, and many other human rights violations."
The report cites instances of prisoners locked away in solitary confinement—widely recognized as a form of psychological torture—for a decade or longer, children sentenced to life in prison, and pregnant inmates chained during childbirth, "who due to the chaining, lost their babies."
"All these practices—including shackling pregnant women before, during, and after labor—are an affront to human dignity and the best interest of the child," the report states. "Instruments of restraint shall never be used on women during labor, during childbirth, and immediately after childbirth, in accordance with the U.N. Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners," also known as the Nelson Mandela Rules.
The experts were "astonished" that forced unpaid or poorly paid convict labor "exists to this day in the United States, constituting a contemporary form of slavery." The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution outlawed slavery and involuntary servitude, "except as punishment for crime," and congressional efforts to close the loophole have been unsuccessful.
The report notes:
The delegation received shocking information over "plantation-style" prisons in Southern states, in which contemporary forms of slavery are reported. Commonly known as "Angola," the Louisiana State Penitentiary occupies an 18,000-acre former slave plantation, larger than the island of Manhattan. The plantation prison soil worked by incarcerated labor today is the same soil worked by slaves before the Civil War. Angola currently houses nearly 5,000 adult men, the majority of them Black men, forced to labor in the fields (even picking cotton) under the watch of white "freemen" on horseback, in conditions very similar to those of 150 years ago. The mechanism received direct testimonies from Angola victims and allegations of children being transferred to this prison, held in solitary confinement, and in general under appalling detention conditions.
Earlier this month, a federal judge ordered Louisiana officials to stop imprisoning children on Angola's former death row by September 15.
Addressing the more than 1,000 people killed annually by U.S. law enforcement officers—only 1% of which result in the killer being criminally charged—the report warns that such killings will continue unless police use of force regulations are aligned with international standards.
"We reject the 'bad apple' theory," There is strong evidence suggesting that the abusive behavior of some individual police officers is part of a broader and menacing pattern," said mechanism expert member Juan Méndez. "Law enforcement and criminal justice institutions in the United States share and reproduce values, attitudes, and stereotypes of U.S. society and institutions. These must be reformed."
To that end, the report contains a lengthy list of over 30 recommendations, including:
- Fully implementing the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights' four-point agenda for transformative change for racial justice and equality;
- Tackling poverty and lack of quality education, employment opportunities, healthcare, adequate housing, and other human rights violations as a way to combat systemic racism;
- Adopting a human rights-based approach to policing and a national strategy—including legislation—to reduce killings by law enforcement;
- Eliminating all racial profiling;
- Creating an effective nationwide record system of individuals under investigation or found criminally or administrative guilty for police misconduct;
- Removing police from schools in favor of alternatives, including counselors, social workers, nurses, and mental health professionals;
- Adopting an immigration system with a human rights-based approach and addressing systemic racism within the ranks of immigration authorities;
- Ending the "War on Drugs" and adopting a human rights-based approach to drug policies, in part by decriminalizing low-level drug offenses;
- Reducing and strictly regulating militarized police and "no knock" entries;
- Abolishing the death penalty, "death by incarceration" sentencing, and the charging of children as adults;
- Exercising clemency powers in favor of condemned prisoners, people serving sentences beyond life expectancy, and those who were convicted for confessions under torture—especially children;
- Strictly regulating solitary confinement and other forms of restrictions in detention in accordance with international standards;
- Eliminating free or poorly paid prison labor; and
- Reducing former felon disenfranchisement.
"Our findings," said Méndez, "point to the critical need for comprehensive reform."
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ACLU Urges Court to Save Children From Deadly Heat at Louisiana's Angola Prison
"It has been dangerously hot in Angola so far this summer," said one medical expert. "Confining children for all or most of the day to concrete and cement buildings without air conditioning is foolhardy and perilous."
Jul 18, 2023
The ACLU and other legal advocacy groups on Monday issued an emergency plea for a federal court to order the transfer of children incarcerated at the Louisiana State Penitentiary—better known as the notorious Angola prison—in potentially deadly temperatures exceeding 130°F on the heat index without air conditioning.
Scores of teenagers imprisoned on Angola's former death row were locked in windowless cells without air conditioning for nearly 24 hours a day for several days this month as temperatures soared, the groups claim. At least 13 people in Texas and Louisiana have died from the scorching heat in recent weeks.
It's getting worse. On Tuesday, the mercury topped 97°F at the prison, with high temperatures forecast to approach 100°F later this week. The heat index makes it feel even hotter—as hot as 133°F, according to The Appeal.
"I would not dare to keep my dog in these conditions for fear of my dog dying," Dr. Susi U. Vassallo, a medical expert for the prisoners, wrote in a statement to the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana. "It has been dangerously hot in Angola so far this summer. Confining children for all or most of the day to concrete and cement buildings without air conditioning is foolhardy and perilous."
"My personal knowledge of the unconstitutional and inadequate medical care provided to adults at Angola heightens my fear that a child will deteriorate or die at Angola due to the conditions and the poor health care provided at the prison," Vassallo added.
According to The Appeal:
The ACLU and other legal advocates sued in August to stop the transfers to Angola due to what they said were inhumane conditions inside the facility. But a federal judge let the plan commence after [Louisiana Office of Juvenile Justice] promised it would provide children with education, programs, and services at the facility.
But David Utter, lead counsel in the lawsuit and executive director of the Fair Fight Initiative, told The Appeal in an interview that the agency has failed to deliver in the months since.
"What the state promised that they were going to do before they put any young people in that facility has not happened, and it's time to stop taking the state at his word," Utter said. "The trauma that the state is inflicting on these young people is immeasurable."
The civil rights groups' emergency filing claims child prisoners at Angola are locked up in solitary confinement for 72 hours straight, and that they're confined to their cells for 23 hours a day as punishment and only allowed out to shower or to a recreation area while handcuffed and shackled.
While state officials say the youth unit at Angola will be closed this autumn, critics say the teens can't wait that long. Many also question why children—most of them Black—are imprisoned on the former death row of one of the country's most infamous penitentiaries, which was built on the site of a former slave plantation.
Last year, Chief U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, ruled that minors could be imprisoned at Angola, even though she found Louisiana's plan to do so "disturbing."
"You're sending Black kids to this facility and you're calling it something else," Antonio Travis, youth organizing manager and the New Orleans chapter lead for the group Families and Friends of Louisiana's Incarcerated Children, told The Appeal. "You're calling it something different as if it's not what it is. It's Angola."
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Albert Woodfox, the Last of the Angola Three, Is Finally Free
Feb 26, 2016
Albert Woodfox turned 69 years old on Friday. He also was released from prison that day after serving 43 years in solitary confinement, more time than anyone in U.S. history. "Quite a birthday gift," Woodfox told us during the "Democracy Now!" news hour in his first televised interview after gaining his freedom. Woodfox is a living testament to the resilience of the human spirit when subjected to the cruel and unusual punishment of solitary. His case also serves as a stark reminder of the injustice that pervades the American criminal justice system.
Woodfox was in his early 20s when he was imprisoned for armed robbery in 1971. He was sent to the notorious Louisiana State Penitentiary, known as Angola, a sprawling prison complex with 5,000 prisoners located in rural Louisiana on the site of a former slave plantation. It gets its name, "Angola," from the country of origin of many slaves.
Conditions in Angola in 1971 were so violent and appalling that Woodfox, along with another prisoner, Herman Wallace, formed one of the first prison chapters of the Black Panther Party. In 1972, Woodfox and Wallace were charged with the murder of prison guard Brent Miller. No physical evidence linked the men to the crime. A bloody fingerprint at the murder scene, which matched neither Wallace's nor Woodfox's, was ignored by authorities. Robert King, another prisoner who joined their Black Panther chapter, was charged with a separate crime in the prison. The three were sent to solitary confinement, where they remained for decades, always maintaining they were innocent of the charges.
Albert Woodfox recalled those early days of organizing inside of Angola when we spoke with him just days after his release: "The saddest thing in the world is to see a human spirit crushed. And that's basically what happened with these young kids coming to Angola. And we decided that if we truly believed in what we were trying to do, it was worth taking whatever measures necessary to try to stop this."
Even back then, the Angola 3, as they became known, were well aware of the potential impacts of solitary confinement. Woodfox recalled during our interview, "When we were first put in CCR [closed cell restriction] in '72, myself, Herman Wallace, and Robert King, we knew that if we had any chance of maintaining our sanity and not allowing the prison system to break us, that we had to keep our focus on society and not become institutionalized." When I asked Woodfox what he read in prison, he told me, "History books, books on Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King, Frantz Fanon, James Baldwin."
A movement grew, globally, to free the Angola 3, with Amnesty International and other organizations calling for their release. Documentaries were made about the case. In one, the widow of Brent Miller joined the call, saying in 2010, "These men, I mean, if they did not do this--and I believe that they didn't--they have been living a nightmare for 36 years."
Two major impediments to their freedom were prison warden Burl Cain and Louisiana Attorney General James "Buddy" Caldwell. Cain was the key decision-maker in keeping the men in solitary. In a 2008 deposition in Woodfox's case, Cain admitted, "I still know that he is still trying to practice Black Pantherism." And while Woodfox's case was overturned on three separate occasions, with a federal judge ordering his release, Attorney General Caldwell insisted on repeatedly retrying the case. Cain resigned in December, facing state ethics violations and a criminal probe for business dealings during his reign as the longest-serving warden in Angola's history. Caldwell lost re-election to fellow Republican Jeff Landry, who allowed Woodfox to leave prison on the condition that he plead "no contest" to manslaughter.
Woodfox squinted into the camera as he spoke on "Democracy Now!." The years of confinement in a six by nine foot cell had damaged his vision. He is proud of his activism. "We've put this solitary-confinement issue before American people, before the people of the world, and it just started building," he said. "It got to the point where it wasn't just about the Angola 3, but it was about solitary confinement."
Robert King was released in 2001, his conviction overturned after serving 29 years in solitary confinement. Herman Wallace was freed in 2013, only after a federal judge threatened to jail Cain if he refused to release him. Wallace died one day later of liver cancer. On Monday, we asked Albert Woodfox about his plans: "I've been locked up so long in a prison within a prison. So, for me, it's just about learning how to live as a free person," he told us. "I'm just trying to learn how to be free."
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