At the women’s camp, some prisoners said they were quarantined in the mess hall or visitation room, where they slept on cots with no access to heat, clean clothes, or fresh air for more than two weeks. Officials “said that since we wanna complain about it, we’re staying here extra time,” said Esther Arias, who was released last week after more than a decade behind bars. The prison complex, which faces a COVID-related lawsuit in federal court, did not respond to a request for comment.

The warden at one point refused to continue testing prisoners for fear too many would be positive “and it’ll look bad,” said Derek Crihfield, president of the correction officers union local. Gilmer is one of a handful of quarantine sites intended to house people entering the prison system until they could be cleared as COVID-free. A prison system spokesman said the facility had been testing all incoming prisoners, and following guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control.

Prisoners and their families described half-hearted attempts to separate the sick and the well, and increasing tension inside the units as they watched officials put up unexplained emergency tents outside and saw their friends falling ill inside. Staff say they are doing everything they can in the circumstances, though the prison did not respond to a request for comment. But a 79-year-old prisoner wrote in a motion for release that the medical center “is now nothing more than a de facto Death Row for elderly and sick offenders. This facility is literally God’s waiting room.”

When coronavirus hit, some women at the camp were still reeling from a Legionnaires’ outbreak last year. According to a prisoner’s husband, Coleman officials sent some people suspected of having COVID-19 to solitary—which for women meant confinement in the men’s facility. Some people who had been exposed were mixed in dorms with others who hadn’t, the woman’s husband said: “It’s just a cruel punishment to have them stuck in these conditions.” Though the prison complex, the largest in the nation, reported few cases, the union said that was because of limited testing. A bureau spokesman said that women and men were not housed in the same units but would not provide details on specific housing conditions due to security reasons.

The prison was “not even close” to being able to keep men six feet apart, one prisoner wrote. Those showing symptoms were typically put in solitary confinement, so men stood on chairs in front of air conditioning vents to cool their heads and hide any fever. “To die in a hospital, alone, is tragic,” the prisoner wrote. “To die in solitary confinement, alone, inhumane.” The prison did not respond to a request for comment.

Prisoners described the facility as overcrowded and unsanitary, with a leaking roof and visible mold. Some women slept with their heads 6 inches away from other prisoners, inmates wrote in a court filing. “To be blunt, FCI-Tallahassee is a filthy rundown prison before the pandemic. It is a fair statement, not hyperbole, to say FCI-Tallahassee's medical care is inadequate in normal conditions and non-existent during the pandemic.” The prison did not respond to our questions.

Prisoners were banned from going outside and locked in their crowded dorms where it was impossible to practice social distancing. In the mess hall, they were told to stay 6 feet apart, even though their bunks back in the dorm were barely 12 inches from each other. “They’re like sardines,” one prisoner’s mother said. Her son “could touch like four guys just by leaning over.” The prison did not respond to our questions.