NY Gov Slammed for Using ‘Slave Labor’ in Manufacture of Hand Sanitizer
ANGOLA PRISON, LOUISIANA - OCTOBER 14, 2013:
A prisoner's hands inside a punishment cell wing at Angola prison.
The Louisiana State Penitentiary, also known as Angola, and nicknamed the "Alcatraz of the South" and "The Farm" is a maximum-security prison farm in Louisiana operated by the Louisiana Department of Public Safety & Corrections. It is named Angola after the former plantation that occupied this territory, which was named for the African country that was the origin of many enslaved Africans brought to Louisiana in slavery times.
This is the largest maximum-security prison in the United States[with 6,300 prisoners and 1,800 staff, including corrections officers, janitors, maintenance, and wardens. It is located on an 18,000-acre (7,300 ha) property that was previously known as the Angola Plantations and bordered on three sides by the Mississippi River.
(Photo by Giles Clarke/Getty Images)
Justice groups were incensed when NY Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced plans on March 9 for prison inmates to manufacture hand sanitizer in an effort to combat shortages caused by the spread of the coronavirus, The Washington Post reports. They argue that it isn’t just to ask this of incarcerated people when they generally earn less than $1 per hour, and “have a heightenedrisk of contracting the virus, and are forbidden from possessing hand sanitizer themselves,” according to The Post.
