These Florida residents were unable to escape Hurricane Milton. They are locked up. – Mother Jones

Flooding in Clearwater, the seat of Pinellas County, Florida.AP Photo/Mike Stewart

This story was originally published by Vox.com and is shown here as part of the Climate agency cooperation.

Come on The devastating landfall of Hurricane Milton on Wednesday evening left millions of residents choosing to leave. For about 1,200 inmates at the Manatee County Jail, located in a large evacuation area near Sarasota, Florida, that wasn’t an option. Local authorities decided not to evacuate the prisoners, so they rode out the storm – which brought widespread flooding, property damage and heavy winds to the area – inside the prison.

They were not alone. The Manatee County Jail is one of many that chose not to evacuate, according to the New York Times. Pinellas County and Lee County, two others on the Gulf Coast that were in the direct path of the storm, also did not evacuate their jails, according to a Pinellas County news conference and a spokesman for the Lee County Sheriff’s Office. (Manatee County and Pinellas County Sheriff’s Offices did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

The plight of Florida prisoners is just the latest example showing how vulnerable incarcerated people are during natural disasters, when they have no control over their mobility or their exposure to dangerous situations.

Like the Appeal and Fort Myers News-Press According to reports, officials from Manatee, Pinellas and Lee County argued that they could move inmates to higher floors in case of flooding and storm surges. Manatee County officials also described the jail as “hurricane-proof,” while Pinellas County officials cited the logistical challenge of moving 3,100 inmates from the facility during the storm as justification for their decision.

The Lee County Jail was fully staffed and had water tanks on standby, the spokesperson said, noting that all inmates were safe as of Thursday afternoon. The main facility lost power during the storm, the spokesperson added, but there were no other “notable incidents.”

The Manatee Sheriff’s Office also said so Appeal that the inmates were “storm safe” as of Thursday and that the power went on and off, but they did not lose running water. The Pinellas Sheriff’s Office told the publication it had power and no running water issues.

The Florida Department of Corrections, which oversees state prisons, meanwhile said “all staff and inmates in the path of Hurricane Milton have been accounted for,” in an update it posted Thursday morning. According to the DOC, 5,950 inmates had been evacuated from 37 facilities across the state at that time.

The DOC has also said its public list of evacuated facilities is delayed and may be incomplete, as it is not updated until 24 hours after inmates have already been transported. It told Vox that it considers multiple risk factors when considering evacuations, including “the path of the storm…timing, traffic disruption, the risks of evacuating prisoners and the conditions of the facilities being evacuated.”

In total, more than 28,000 people have been confined to facilities in provinces under full or partial evacuation orders, and many were not evacuated. Appeal reported.

The decision not to evacuate certain facilities was in stark contrast to dire warnings from regional leaders about the need to leave areas in the storm’s path and the life-or-death risks people face if they don’t. For example, the Manatee County Jail is in Evacuation Zone A, an area with a high risk of flooding.

“We do not issue evacuation orders lightly,” Manatee County Public Safety Director Jodie Fiske previously said in a news release. “Milton is expected to produce more storm surges than Helene. So if you were to stay during Helene and get lucky, I wouldn’t push my luck with this particular system.

Florida’s prisoners are not the first to have to take shelter during a major hurricane. When Hurricane Helene struck last month, 550 men in North Carolina were held in flooded cells at Mountain View Correctional Institution for five days without lights or running water. Intercept reports. Previously, hundreds of inmates were left without food or water during Hurricane Katrina after Orleans Parish Prison staff fled.

Incarcerated people are often neglected when it comes to ensuring their safety during natural disasters, but are often exploited for labor in the aftermath of those same situations. In Louisiana, inmates carried out cleanup and recovery efforts after Hurricane Francine in September, and in California they have been critical to fighting wildfires for years. While some of these tasks provide an alternative path to rehabilitation or allow inmates to refine new skills, none provide the same job protections in terms of safety or wages that other workers typically receive.

“The incarcerated population is doubly vulnerable,” said Corene Kendrick, deputy director of the ACLU’s National Prison Project. Vox. “First, they are often overlooked or deliberately just ignored… when disaster looms, and then they are expected to turn around and clean up the mess in the aftermath of the disaster.”

Federally, there are no requirements to ensure the safety of incarcerated people during natural disasters, Kendrick said Vox. And while policies vary by state, a 2022 study published in the American Journal of Public Health found that only six states mentioned safety protocols for incarcerated people in public plans describing their responses to emergencies, while 24 states mentioned the use of their labor for disaster mitigation.

“That patchwork becomes even more fragmented when you get down to the local level of prisons, because there is significant local control over the way prisons operate,” said Mike Wessler, communications director for the Prison Policy Initiative. Vox.

And while there is a Supreme Court ruling setting a safety standard for prisoners, experts note that abuse lawsuits face an uphill battle following the passage of the Prison Litigation Reform Act in the 1990s, which made it much more difficult for prisoners to file civil lawsuits. . Prisons and jails also have limited federal or state oversight, often leading to little accountability.

As a result, incarcerated people are particularly vulnerable to neglect and other abuse, in general and during natural disasters in particular, which can endanger their health and lives. During previous disasters in Florida, such as Hurricane Ian in 2022, inmates described a shortage of running water, including a lack of potable water and non-flushing toilets.

Kendrick and Wessler noted that prisons suffer from a failure to prepare for these increasingly common natural disasters, as well as a broader lack of concern for the well-being of inmates. To facilitate an evacuation, these facilities require agreements with other facilities where they can transport prisoners, large group transportation, fuel and other resources; proposals that they must submit before the emergency itself.

As a starting point, states and counties should have policies that impose mandatory evacuation orders on prisoners, the same way they do on other non-incarcerated people, Kendrick said. (While the government isn’t forcing people to leave, it is technically illegal to stay in a mandatory evacuation zone during a storm.)

The federal government could also provide disaster assistance to states based on their evacuation policies, in an effort to ensure prisoners are protected, attorney Maya Habash explains in the University of Maryland Law Journal. Federal laws such as the Stafford Act and the Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act, which require the government to provide resources to protect vulnerable populations, could also be amended to include references to prisoners to make clear that they also recipients of funding. And the federal government could establish clear mandates outlining how prisons should treat inmates during natural disasters.

“I think the federal government should set national standards for jails and prisons and emergency responses, and those should be the floor, not the ceiling, for what places should do,” Wessler said. Vox.