What Happened to the Women Prisoners at Hickman's Farms

News reports in recent years have exposed a litany of horrors endured by women sentenced to U.S. prisons. Now, in a special investigation, Cosmopolitan reports on another bombshell: During the pandemic, in an unheard-of experiment, incarcerated women were moved to a prison camp on a multimillion-dollar private farm, where dirty, dangerous, meagerly paid work changed their lives forever.

- ELIZABETH WHITMAN

1. MAYHEM

"Everybody who works at Hickman's, get up! Pack your stuff-you're being moved today!"

Corrections officers swarmed the Santa Rosa Unit at the Perryville women's prison in Goodyear, Arizona, barking orders and handing out trash bags for belongings. Many women were alarmed. We're being moved to Hickman's? How?

The officers weren't sharing a lot of details. The women would be loaded into vehicles, that much was apparent, then dropped off at one of the company's properties not far from the prison. Those who refused to go would automatically lose their jobs at the commercial egg farm, officers said. There was vague talk of other disciplinary action too, a frightening possibility.

It was March 25, 2020, and the world outside was plunging into crisis. COVID-19 was a deadly new pandemic. At Perryville, lockdowns were rapidly taking effect. First, visitors were barred from entering the grounds. Then came rumors that prison officials would be shutting down all jobs beyond prison walls-jobs on the fire crew, jobs in a state hospital kitchen. All the outside jobs, that is, except for those at Hickman's Family Farms, one of the Arizona prison system's biggest clients.

Many women at Perryville needed their jobs to pay for basic necessities-things like regular soap and toothpaste and to help build a financial cushion for after their release. Working for an outside client paid better than working for the prison itself, where you might make 25 cents an hour as a groundskeeper. Still, even the highest-paying outside jobs paid far less than minimum wage after deductions by the prison, and some gigs were more grueling and dangerous than others.