First widespread coronavirus outbreak at Florida prison stirs dread
Less than one week after the first case was reported there in the prison population, a much wider coronavirus outbreak has gripped a privately managed prison in Florida’s Panhandle — and the inmates are sounding the alarm.
Thirty coronavirus cases have been reported among inmates at Blackwater River Correctional Facility near Pensacola, operated by the Geo Group. That accounts for all but one of the inmate positives currently acknowledged by the Florida prison system, the third-largest in the country.
Despite the ongoing pandemic, which also has infected six Blackwater staffers, inmates are not allowed to cover their faces — even with the front of their shirts, family members said. Cleaning products were distributed for the first time Tuesday.
Some inmates have become so sick they can’t get out of bed for roll call, but they have no way of knowing if they have contracted COVID-19 because the medical staff won’t test them, according to two women who have loved ones inside a dorm shared by dozens of inmates who sleep within three feet of each other.
As of Thursday night, the prison is on lockdown, the women said. Prisoners, already on edge, were confined to their beds and prohibited from using phones to contact the outside.
“They’re going to riot,” said one woman, whose 26-year-old son is incarcerated at Blackwater. She spoke with the Miami Herald on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. “There are inmates that are so ill they can’t stand for count. They’re being turned away from medical. There’s a lot of them that are sick in my son’s dorm.”
Blackwater is one of a handful of Florida prisons that are operated by private contractors rather than the Florida Department of Corrections. The Department of Management Services oversees them, although FDC supplies the inmates.
On Friday, Department of Management Services did not immediately respond to questions on the conditions of the 30 sick inmates and whether any had been hospitalized.
In an email earlier in the week, when the outbreak was still limited to a handful of prisoners, DMS Communications Director Rose Hebert said: “The inmates are receiving needed medical care. The GEO Group has implemented guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to safeguard any inmates who may have been in close contact. DMS continues to follow Florida Department of Health (DOH) and Florida Department of Corrections (FDC) protocol for responding to, treating and reporting on COVID-19.”
The email said staffers are wearing protective equipment and, the facility has “increased temperature checks,” especially focusing on older and at risk inmates.
Department of Corrections Secretary Mark Inch Thursday extended the suspension of visitation at all correctional institutions statewide through April 30. The prisons have enforced social distancing during dining and recreation times, Inch wrote in a March 28 letter to families of the incarcerated.
As for other measures enacted by the Florida Department of Corrections, co-pays for inmates with respiratory illness have been waived.
The only inmate case confirmed outside of Blackwater is at the Sumter Correction Institution in Bushnell, according to corrections officials.
The Department of Corrections, which employs 24,000 people statewide and incarcerates around 95,000, has thus far ignored requests for information on how many inmates across the state prison system have been tested.
Coronavirus spreads through prison
Inmates at Blackwater said the illness has spread rapidly throughout the facility, especially in open-air dorms where dozens of inmates share space.
One inmate, who contacted the Miami Herald through a friend, said everyone in his dorm is sick and eight people have moved out. One person, an older man, has been sent to the hospital, he wrote.
“All the people in my row have been sick, including me. All mild symptoms, just having the chills, headache, shortness of breath,” he said. “Almost like someone’s sitting on your chest.”
The inmate wrote that nurses have come by to take temperatures every few hours.
He wrote that because a new person tests positive so often, everyone in the dorm has to re-start their 14-day quarantine. After members of the cooking staff were removed from their kitchen duties, prison guards pulled others in without checking if they were sick, said one woman whose fiancé was tapped for kitchen duty.
“The whole kitchen got cleared out,” she said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “Kitchen workers got sick.”
When she spoke with her fiancé on a communal phone, she heard other inmates coughing nearby. The fiancé, a 45-year-old man who lives in an open-air dorm, said he has no way to know if the person sleeping beside him has coronavirus or not. Prison staff are not communicating with inmates, so the only information they are receiving is from news sources and their families, she said..
“You have inmates really sick in that dorm, choking and coughing,” she said.
In addition to the 31 inmates, 42 corrections staff who work at 21 prisons and three probation offices had tested positive for COVID-19 as of Thursday evening.
A staffer at an unidentified Florida prison told the Miami Herald earlier this week that supervisors at Florida Department of Corrections-run facilities, the vast majority of prisons, have refused to let employees wear protective masks and that inmates who transfer in, even from medical facilities, are not being quarantined to determine if they have symptoms consistent with COVID-19. The department has refused to tell the Herald whether staffers are required to wear masks, allowed to wear masks or neither.
After a two-week suspension of new inmates being introduced into the prison system, the Florida Department of Corrections resumed inmate intake this past Monday. It had asked county jails to quarantine inmates for 14 days before sending them to prison when possible.
Rep. Carlos Guillermo-Smith, a Winter Park Democrat who toured several correctional facilities last summer, said he has seen facilities where inmates are “literally on top of each other” in rooms where cots are very close.
“Social distancing is not even possible,” he said.
He added that 30 inmates testing positive in one facility constitutes “an immediate crisis” that needs to be addressed. He fears similar situations may be happening elsewhere in the state.
“I am not convinced we don’t have a crisis in other facilities because we don’t know how many have been tested,” he said.
Rep. Anna Eskamani, an Orlando Democrat, has been in touch with families who have loved ones in prisons across the state. The answers the state gives about precautions facilities are taking is not enough, she said, and families worry their loved ones will die without proper care.
“Lack of information causes more anxiety,” she said. “It seems like a complete disregard for the lives of our inmates ... we’re disregarding concerns of families by pivoting to talking points that are not substantive.”
This story was originally published April 10, 2020 at 12:03 PM.
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