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As federal prisons address COVID-19, Florida’s Coleman Correctional faces another health scare

The women’s facility had a Legionnaire’s disease outbreak earlier this year.
 
Coleman Federal Correctional Complex in Coleman, Fl. in Sumter County.
Coleman Federal Correctional Complex in Coleman, Fl. in Sumter County. [ Times (2001) ]
Published April 28, 2020

For federal prison inmates, a recent bureaucratic mix up didn’t look like representatives from two massive federal agencies resolving differences in court.

It looked like tears, anger and disappointment. And, especially for older inmates and those with preexisting health conditions, fear.

Last week, hundreds of federal inmates were slated for home confinement, a means to reduce both the prison population and the risk of coronavirus outbreaks among inmates with health issues.

Then, many were informed their planned release dates weren’t valid. Wardens and administrators instead told inmates that only those who had served at least 50 percent of their sentence would be sent home, said Kevin Ring, president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, an advocacy group that supports sentencing reform.

It was a mix up, smoothed out in a few days when the Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Prisons realized the criteria were meant to be guidelines, not a hard line.

“They got their signals crossed and in the process, they hurt a lot of families,” Ring said. “That’s a case where poor communication and bureaucratic bungling just devastated a lot of families in a way that didn’t need to happen.”

A spokesman for the Bureau of Prisons did not respond to multiple email and phone requests for comment from the Tampa Bay Times.

At Florida’s Coleman Federal Correctional Institution Camp, the women’s facility at the nation’s largest federal prison, the question of whether or not inmates will be released early is especially fraught. Earlier this year, there was an outbreak of Legionnaire’s Disease — a pneumonia-like illness spread through water, including airborne droplets.

Last week, former Florida Congresswoman Corrine Brown was released from prison to home confinement. She began a five year sentence at Coleman in early 2018.

Tyler Gold, whose mother recently finished her sentence at Coleman, said he feels like other inmates who had Legionnaire’s disease should be prioritized. He said his mother had it, and she is still recovering.

“They can’t stay in there because that's just a death sentence,” Gold, 29, said.

Others worry that high-profile inmates, like Brown, got preferential treatment. Nicole Pizzarusso, whose cousin is at Coleman, said there are too many sick women there for the Bureau of Prisons to drag its feet in releasing them.

“The way they’re handling everything right now, it just seems more criminal on their part than the actual criminals in the jail,” she said.

Inmates are being released based on the nature of their crime, their conduct in prison, their age and vulnerability and other factors laid out by Attorney General William Barr.

Ring said home confinement is fully under the discretion of the Bureau of Prisons. They use the guidelines to decide who should be released first within each facility, prioritizing facilities that already have high levels of coronavirus infection.

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He said the Department of Justice seems to be prioritizing those with low-level offenses and shorter sentences out of fear of releasing someone who committed a serious crime. But Ring said when there are so many seniors leaving prison who aren’t a risk, it makes him wonder why they were in prison in the first place.

“Being able to get to court and have a good attorney obviously helps you,” Ring said. “I would argue that I want every Corrine Brown out of prison. That should be the norm.”

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