BATON ROUGE, LA. • Men incarcerated at Louisiana State Penitentiary filed a class-action lawsuit Saturday, contending they have been forced to work in the prison’s fields for little or no pay, even when temperatures soar past 100 degrees. They described the conditions as cruel, degrading and often dangerous.

The men, most of whom are Black, work on the farm of the 18,000-acre maximum-security prison known as Angola — the site of a former slave plantation — hoeing, weeding and picking crops by hand, often surrounded by armed guards, the suit said. If they refuse to work or fail to meet quotas, they can be sent to solitary confinement or otherwise punished, according to disciplinary guidelines.

The suit names as defendants Angola’s warden, Timothy Hooper, and officials with Louisiana’s department of corrections and its money-making arm, Prison Enterprises. —