Florida evacuates thousands of prisoners ahead of Hurricane Milton

The state of Florida has evacuated more than 4,600 iprisoners ahead of the arrival of Hurricane Milton, the Category 5 storm that’s expected to bring unprecedented damage to major population centers like Tampa.

As of Tuesday afternoon, the state had “successfully relocated 4,636 inmates without compromising public safety and additional evacuations are underway,” according to the Florida Department of Corrections, with prisoners moved to “hardened institutions” with a better chance of weathering the storm.

Inmate locations are made public 24 hours after relocation, per the agency, and a full list of institutions undergoing evacuation can be found on the department’s website.

The mass evacuation is part of the larger preparations for the arrival of Milton, which is expected to bring historic damage to western Florida, where cities like Tampa haven’t been in the eye of a hurricane in more than a century.

Incarcerated people, whose movements are limited and who are frequently housed in aging and poorly maintained facilities, are especially vulnerable during the kinds of extreme weather that is growing more common amid the climate crisis, from Texas prisoners facing 129 degree temperatures without AC, to North Carolina inmates whose cells were inundated with water during the recent Hurricane Helene.

People were stuck inside Mountain View Correctional Institution in Spruce Pine, North Carolina, for nearly a week during Helene, as their cells flooded, lights went out, and toilets stopped functioning, inmates and their families told The Intercept. The storm caused psychological trauma as well as physical ailments, they said, with one man reporting leg sores due to a lack of proper sanitation.

“My husband told me this morning he’s going to have to go see a therapist because of the things that happened in there,” family member Bridget Gentry told the outlet. “He said, ‘We thought we were going to die there. We didn’t think anybody was going to come back for us.’”

State prison authorities said there were minor roof leaks but no flooding at the facility, where electrical generators maintained essential systems. They added that the prison’s infrastructure functioned well given the mass destruction surrounding it.

In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis has also touted the state’s use of prisoners to clean up after Helene passed through on its tear north.

“We’re utilizing our resources. We’ve got low-security inmates that are out there who do normal prison labor. The Department of Corrections is bringing them to help with hurricane cleanup,” he said last week.

The Republican official said it was cost-effective to have prisoners “out there cleaning up in the debris, which would cost us way more money if you had to do that through some of these private contractors.”

Florida is one of multiple states across the U.S. where incarcerated people can work prison jobs for no pay.

Those among the state’s 80,000 who are paid often earn wages of less than one dollar per hour, despite contributing to manufacturing and other industries generating tens of millions of dollars in sales, according to The Guardian.

The Independent has contacted the governor’s office and state correctional officials for comment on the state’s use of prison labor after Helene, including what inmates may have been paid.

In 2023, multiple Florida counties used unpaid inmate labor to prepare for the arrival of Hurricane Idalia, Orlando Weekly reports.