Political activist Shaun King took to social media today to denounce Caddo Parish Sheriff Steve Prator after the Sheriff released a video where he discussed the upcoming release of prisoners from the Caddo Correctional Center. The video has already been viewed over 400,000 times from King’s facebook page.

Shaun King’s FB post:

The prisoners are being released under the Judicial Reinvestment Act, which seeks to release prisoners who are convicted of nonviolent crimes and have demonstrated good behavior. The Sheriff also noted in an earlier episode of his Straight Shootin’ video series that not all of the prisoners being released are nonviolent.

Furthermore, the Sheriff is also upset because the prisoners that are set to be released are the prisoners that the Sheriff employs to do manual labor tasks around the parish. Some of these tasks include picking up litter and working at the local animal shelter.

King argued that this forced labor is akin to slavery. “Here he [Prator] says how upset he is that new programs are releasing the ‘good’ black men from jail who wash his car, mow the yards, and cook in the kitchen,” King wrote in a Facebook post.

Caddo Parish sent the following out via twitter when asked about Prator

During the video clip, Prator never refers to race.

Watch the full video the previous snippet was taken from (start at minute 26):