Florida prison inmates will begin to make cloth masks. Their correctional officers will get first dibs on the protective gear.

• The Florida Department of Correctional Facilities and Prison Rehabilitative Industries and Diversified Enterprises announced on April 11 that some prison inmates would begin producing cloth face masks.
• However, the face masks they will produce will go to correctional officers, probation officers, and staff before they go to inmates.
• The news comes as the coronavirus has swept across correctional facilities, which doctors told Insider are often "fertile grounds for infectious disease."
• Concerns over the infection spreading within prison walls have prompted some states to release thousands of prisoners.
• Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

As the novel coronavirus sweeps across Florida correctional facilities, inmates will begin making face masks. However, inmates, the most vulnerable group to contracting COVID-19 in prison, will be the last in line to get the protective gear they're producing.

The Florida Department of Correctional Facilities (FDC) and Prison Rehabilitative Industries and Diversified Enterprises, an employment training program within FDC, announced on Saturday that prison inmates who work in clothing production would transition to making cloth face masks according to guidelines set by the CDC.

"It's critical we take all precautions necessary to minimize the potential risk to the inmate population and staff charged with their care and custody," FDC Secretary Mark Inch said in a press release. The statement from the FDC added that the use of cloth face coverings were recommended to help curb the infections in FDC facilities, where social distancing measures are difficult to maintain.

The FDC noted that correctional officers would get first dibs on the cloth face masks produced by inmates, followed by probation officers and other staff in "high-risk geographic areas of the state." That leaves sick Florida inmates at the back of the line to get the protective gear.

The announcement comes as FDC grapples with how to get the coronavirus under control within prison walls.

As of Saturday, there were 35 inmates and 44 employees statewide who have tested positive for COVID-19, the Miami Herald reported. At Blackwater River Correctional Facility, a private prison owned by the GEO Group, inmates are only released from their cells an hour a day to curb the spread of infection.

"I think it's ironic that you would make the sick inmates make masks for the guards," one woman whose son is locked up at Blackwater told the Herald. "I'm just thankful that at this point my son is not sick."

Inmates are among the most vulnerable populations in the novel coronavirus outbreak

Inmates and their advocates have demanded more protection for prisoners, who are essentially powerless from protecting themselves.

Dr. Burton Bentley II, an emergency medicine physician and founder of the consulting firm Elite Medical Experts, told Business Insider that the confines of US prisons are often "fertile grounds for infectious disease" because of how tightly packed they are. Some local governments in Texas, California, and New York, have begun temporarily releasing elderly and low-level inmates to help ease the crowded prison populations.

The lack of social distancing compounded by pervasive issues with access to health care and poor living conditions within American prisons only make inmates more susceptible to the deadly virus.

As their health hangs in the balance, Florida inmates who do not appear to have been stricken by COVID-19 have been enlisted to help make various essential items amid the pandemic, including hand sanitizer, hand wash, and protective gear.

Inch acknowledged the challenges with social distancing due to the prison environment in a letter to families with incarcerated loved ones. However, Inch claimed that FDC staff would be the first to get the facemasks because "they are the greater risk to your loved ones."

"I will start issuing the coverings first to staff because they are the greater risk to your loved ones," Inch wrote. "But over the next two weeks, we hope to have all our staff and your loved ones in cloth face coverings. We have sufficient protective equipment for inmates displaying symptoms, and for those staff that work in direct contact with those in medical isolation."

However, Linda, a mother whose son is incarcerated at Blackwater fears the masks may come too late.

"It's spreading really bad in there," she told the Washington Post. "I pray so hard for my son who's in there now … They definitely need to be protected."

Read the original article on Insider