The spread of COVID-19 inside Florida’s prison system, with 95,000 inmates and 23,000 employees in 143 sites, has been a dry tinder incendiary in many pandemic wildfire scenarios.
On Friday, the state’s Department of Corrections (DOC) reported 20 employees who work in 12 sites and two probation offices tested positive for the coronavirus, raising to 28 the number of workers diagnosed with COVID-19 since the first DOC staffer was diagnosed March 24.
But there was good news, of sorts, in DOC’s announcement: No state prisoners had, thus far, tested positive for the disease.
That changed two days later.
The DOC reported Sunday two inmates at Blackwater River Correctional Facility near Pensacola had tested positive for COVID-19.
The unnamed inmates are housed in a 2,000-bed private prison in Milton operated by Geo Group Inc., where five employees also have tested positive for COVID-19.
Even before the department disclosed the two Blackwater River inmates had tested positive, the DOC and Gov. Ron DeSantis were being pressured to take measures to blunt the viral wave among confined prison populations.
“Priority considerations should be given to all medically ill inmates that do not pose a threat to the community who have lung, breathing and respiratory conditions that are prone to, or susceptible to, lung diseases and or airborne illnesses,” Congresswoman Kathy Castor and state Rep. Dianne Hart, both Democrats from Tampa, implored DeSantis in an April 1 joint news release asking for “compassionate releases.”
DOC will not discuss how it is testing inmates, how many have been tested and where, but it maintains it is taking precautions to contain the virus.
According to a March 28 letter to prisoners’ families, DOC Secretary Mark Inch said prisons have enforced social distancing during dining and recreation times, and are isolating inmates who experience COVID-19 symptoms.
DOC staffers are cleaning and disinfecting with more frequency, and visitations have been suspended now for several weeks, the department said, noting county jails must quarantine inmates for 14 days before transferring them to state custody.
State Reps. Anna Eskamani and Carlos Guillermo Smith, both Orlando-area Democrats, maintain DOC’s prisoner COVID-19 count is likely much higher and want to know why it won’t say how many inmates are being tested.
“We demand transparency,” Smith tweeted.
The REFORM Alliance, which includes the American Conservative Union, Americans for Prosperity, Faith and Freedom Coalition, Justice Action Network, National Urban League and Right on Crime, as well as Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM) have called upon the state to step up its prison and jail safeguards.
FAMM has called upon DeSantis to call a special session on prison safety to give DOC tools “they currently lack” requiring legislative action “and legislative action requires a special session.”
At Florida’s nine federal prisons, which house nearly 10,000 inmates, no confirmed cases among prisoners and staff have been reported by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.
Seven of the nearly 175,000 federal inmates imprisoned nationwide, in a 14-day lockdown since April 1, have died since March 28 of COVID-19, according to the bureau, which reports 75 inmates and 39 of its 36,350 employees have tested positive. None in Florida.
A Monroe County jail near Key West, which has housed federal immigration-hold inmates for 23 years for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will not do so during the coronavirus outbreak.
Late Friday, Monroe County deputies bused 48 detainees from Stock Island to a Miami-Dade County jail after the sheriff’s office requested immigration-hold inmates be transferred out.
