Prison Policy Report Issues Florida Prisons An “F” Grade For COVID Response

Florida Phoenix

September 1, 2021

Florida state prisons had the nation’s third-highest number of COVID-19 deaths among inmates and was 17th highest in its mortality rate, earning an “F” grade for its COVID response in a 50-state analysis by the Prison Policy Initiative, an independent research and advocacy organization that studies mass incarceration.

Florida prisons lost 221 inmates to COVID, trailing only Texas and California, which have larger general populations and larger prison populations, according to COVID data through July analyzed by the prison-policy research group.

Florida wasn’t alone in getting failing marks from the research group. Only 13 state prison systems were graded above an “F.” The highest grades were a “C” for New Jersey and a “C-“ for California, both of which engaged in progressive policies to reduce the density of their prisons by furloughing or deferring imprisonment of low-risk offenders.

“From the beginning of the pandemic, it was clear that densely packed prisons and jails — the result of decades of mass incarceration in the U.S. — presented dangerous conditions for the transmission of COVID-19. More than a year later, the virus has claimed more than 2,700 lives behind bars and infected one out of every three people in prison,” wrote the authors of the report, Tiana Herring and Maanas Sharma.

“We gave most states failing grades because they refused to address basic health and mental health needs for those trapped inside, and they shied away from releasing large numbers of people who could have been safely returned home, all of which contributed to extremely dangerous conditions behind bars.”

The report, available here, studied rates of infection, death, and vaccination, and it compared policies that Prison Policy Initiative believes to be effective at mitigating illness and loss of life in prisons during this public-health crisis without sacrificing public safety.

It also cited a shortage of of readily available public data, as is the case in Florida, which stopped posting prison-related COVID data in June, after previously scaling back its data release to just a few sentences posted on the Corrections Department website.

The Florida Department of Corrections has not yet responded to the Phoenix’s questions about the findings in the report.

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