Brandon Joseph Lavergne, who is incarcerated at the Lafourche Parish jail, helps clear trees after Hurricane Francine. (Photo by Julie O’Donoghue/Louisiana Illuminator)
In the week after Hurricane Ida, when an enormous generator powering Lafourche Parish’s 675-person jail threatened to overheat and shut down, Sheriff Craig Webre turned to an unexpected place for help.
He asked one of the incarcerated people, George Robichaux, if he could keep it going.
In his early 40s, Robichaux has been in and out of the jail for the past 10 years, most recently for theft. He’s also a bit of a mechanical wizard, Webre said, the type of person who can seemingly fix anything.
The sheriff’s instincts about Robichaux turned out to be right.
After calling around to find a spare fan belt in Thibodaux, Robichaux was able to revive the generator, which he described as “big enough to power half of Lafourche,” to run for several more months. The solution turned out to be a blessing.
For one, Hurricane Ida knocked out power across much of the parish for weeks in the fall of 2021. The replacement part for the car-sized generator, which had to come from France, also didn’t arrive for another six months.
“I’m from here. Everyone knows I’m a mechanic,” Robichaux said Thursday, the day after Hurricane Francine made landfall. “I learned a lot of it from my dad and grandpa.”
As he talked to a reporter, Robichaux replaced a headlight on a sheriff’s office van used to transport incarcerated people. He had also repaired chainsaws and smaller generators that day to help with storm recovery. .
Francine wasn’t as destructive as Ida had been, but large swaths of Lafourche still lost power Wednesday. Jail work crews made up of incarcerated people were busy clearing downed trees from the roads Thursday.
In Louisiana, everyone pitches in to help out after a hurricane, even people who are usually behind bars.
“I would much rather do this than be locked in a cell all day,” Robichaux said.
George Robichaux, who is incarcerated at the Lafourche Parish jail, repairs a jail van that transports inmates. (Photo by Julie O’Donoghue/Illuminator)
Incarcerated natural disaster response
Louisiana is certainly not the only place in America where prisoners respond to natural disasters. Several other states, most famously California, use incarcerated people to contain wildfires, for example.
By 2020, most states in the country had government emergency response plans that relied partly on incarcerated labor to deal with a crisis, according to research done from Texas A&M.
But Louisiana sets itself apart in two ways. It has the highest per capita incarceration rate in the country, meaning there are more prisoners per person here than anywhere else, and it is one of the most hurricane-prone states in America. The opportunities to use cheap, inmate labor for natural disaster response are particularly abundant here.
Incarcerated people housed at Louisiana’s nine state prisons are, in general, convicted of more serious crimes and do not leave their facilities to help with hurricane recovery. They often contribute by filling sandbags on site.
State inmates, mostly at Elayn Hunt Correctional Center in St. Gabriel, filled 16,000 sandbags ahead of Francine that were transferred to the National Guard for distribution to the public, prison system spokesman Ken Pastorick said last week.
But unlike any other state, most of Louisiana’s 28,000 state inmates aren’t staying in state prisons. About 15,000 are in local jails, where sheriffs can put them on public-facing work crews after a natural disaster.
“It’s very common for many sheriffs,” Webre said.
Lafourche’s neighbor, Terrebonne Parish, uses incarcerated people in a similar way to clean up after a hurricane, a spokesman said last week, but at least two of the larger jails in the state do not.
Orleans and Jefferson parishes don’t have space in their local correctional facilities to house state prisoners for that type of work, according to representatives of the sheriffs who run them.
Those facilities are overcrowded with pre-trial detainees who haven’t been convicted of crimes and aren’t sentenced to hard labor yet. People in that position are almost never put on a work crew.
In Lafourche, Webre has room to hold state inmates and uses 35 to 40 incarcerated people in his custody as “trusties,” who work regular jobs. They start out inside the correctional center in a position like a cook or janitor.
Those who are well-behaved can eventually start working in public outside the facility if they want, assuming they haven’t been convicted of a sex offense or a “very violent crime,” Webre said.
“It benefits the community at large,” he said. “People are breathing fresh air and getting exercise.”
The trusties typically clean parish government buildings and grounds, cut grass and set up for major events such as Mardi Gras parades. Last week after Francine, trusties helped stack sandbags to prevent flooding and used power tools to hack through fallen foliage blocking roadways.
“I wanted to be a trusty, so I’m not in the jail all day,” said Kevin Cox, who is on one of the work crews that helps remove branches from the road. Jail records show Cox is being held for a parole violation and as a felon found in possession of a firearm.
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Pay for incarcerated work
On the outskirts of Thibodaux, inmate Brandon Joseph Lavergne scrambled up a felled tree Thursday and straddled the trunk while taking a chainsaw to its larger limbs. Lavergne, who was arrested in 2019, became a trusty 15 months ago.
Before he ever went to jail, he knew his way around a chainsaw and chopping through trees. His dad owned a tree service when he was growing up.
“I’ve been doing this since I was 12 years old,” Lavergne said after jumping down from the tree.
Not everyone has Lavergne’s experience, however. Advocates for incarcerated people have objected to the dangers of prison labor jobs in general.
Civil rights attorneys are suing the state prison system for allegedly forcing inmates at Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola to work in agricultural fields in unreasonably hot weather without enough breaks. In California, incarcerated firefighters have been injured more often than their professional, civilian counterparts, according to Time magazine.
Brandon Joseph Lavergne uses a chainsaw to cut up a tree in Lafourche Parish after Hurricane Francine. Lavergne and the other members of his work crew are incarcerated at the Lafourche Parish jail. (Photo by Julie O’Donoghue/Illuminator)
In Lafourche, the trusties aren’t working on a farm or in a job as dangerous as containing a wildfire, but they also aren’t paid money for their work.
Webre said he provides compensation in other ways.
All trusties get 20 minutes of free telephone calls instead of 10 minutes like a regular inmate or detainee. They also get to stay in the common area later in the day and more television time. The jail also provides trusties a higher spending limit at the commissary, where they can buy snacks and personal items such as toothpaste.
Incarcerated people who are under the sheriff’s authority — generally those convicted of less serious offenses — can also shorten their sentences by becoming a trusty. Webre gives them one day off their sentence for every day of trusty work.
“Instead of doing nothing but watching TV and talking on the phone in a safe and secure facility, you are in sweltering heat cutting trees,” Webre said. “I think, to me, it speaks for itself. People should be rewarded for doing things that they are not required to do.”
“You are teaching people who have violated the law that if you follow rules and be productive, you can be rewarded for that,” he said.
The sheriff cannot shorten the sentences of state inmates under his watch, even if they work as trusties in his jail. Their earned time off is based on a separate set of rules outside his control.
Advocates for incarcerated people would like to see people earn some money while they serve time, regardless of the privileges put on the table, and especially if they are working a difficult job.
Leaving prison without any startup cash makes it hard for people to stay away from criminal activity when they are first released, according to advocates.
“Why not give people $10 or $15 per day? … You can’t find a few hundred dollars to help these folks out?” said Bruce Reilly, from Voice of the Experienced (VOTE) in New Orleans. The advocacy organization for incarcerated people is run by people who’ve spent time in prison.
“That $1,000 the day you have when you get out of prison is probably more valuable than having $50,000 a year later,” Reilly said.
Yet even without pay, people are eager to be trusties in Lafourche Parish, a sentiment Reilly said he personally understands.
“I imagine that most of them probably have some family members in the area and are concerned about them as anybody else would be,” he said.
Reilly served time in prison outside of Louisiana in the Northeast and recalls volunteering to shovel snow in the middle of the night just to be able to go outside to see the moon. It’s often better than sitting in a cell, he said.
“Two things can be true at one time. There could be exploitation happening and [the incarcerated person] could be finding the benefits of that exploitation,” Reilly said.
Kevin Cox, who is incarcerated at the Lafourche Parish jail, helped clear trees after Hurricane Francine. (Photo by Julie O’Donoghue/Illuminator)