The Historical Society of Avon ParkAVON PARK, FL · EST. 1886
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The Federal Emergency Detention Camp at Avon Park (1951–1953)

Between 1951 and 1953, the cantonment area of the former Avon Park Army Airfield on the Avon Park Bombing Range was designated and maintained by the United States Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Prisons as a federal emergency detention camp.[hearing-2001][hcis-hearings-1970] Created under Cold War national security legislation, the facility operated on a standby caretaker basis rather than as a conventional penal camp, explaining why federal inmate rosters and convict labor records do not appear in published Bureau of Prisons annual reports.[hcis-hearings-1970][time-1969-detention]

Statutory Origin: The Emergency Detention Act of 1950

On 23 September 1950, the United States Congress enacted the Internal Security Act of 1950 (Public Law 81-831, 64 Stat. 987, commonly known as the McCarran Act).[mccarran-act-1950] Title II of the statute, designated as the Emergency Detention Act of 1950 (64 Stat. 1019, 50 U.S.C. §§ 811–826), granted the President statutory authority to declare an “Internal Security Emergency” in the event of an invasion of United States territory, a declaration of war by Congress, or an insurrection within the United States in aid of a foreign enemy.[mccarran-act-1950]

Upon such a proclamation, the statute empowered the Attorney General to apprehend and detain individuals who were suspected of engaging in, or conspiring to engage in, acts of espionage or sabotage.[mccarran-act-1950][hcis-hearings-1970] To implement Title II, the Department of Justice was directed to establish detention facilities equipped to receive and hold detainees without standard criminal trial pending administrative hearings before an Emergency Detention Review Board.[mccarran-act-1950]

The Six Standby Detention Sites

In late 1951, Attorney General J. Howard McGrath directed Federal Bureau of Prisons Director James V. Bennett to survey surplus federal military properties and prisoner-of-war camps across the country and select sites suitable for rehabilitation into emergency detention camps.[hcis-hearings-1970][time-1969-detention] The Department of Justice designated six installations across the United States:[hcis-hearings-1970][time-1969-detention]

  1. Avon Park, Florida: The main cantonment of the deactivated Avon Park Army Airfield on the Air Force Bombing Range.
  2. Allenwood, Pennsylvania: A former military ordnance reservation.
  3. Florence, Arizona: A World War II prisoner-of-war internment camp.
  4. Wickenburg, Arizona: A former military flight training and glider base.
  5. El Reno, Oklahoma: Surplus land adjacent to the Federal Reformatory.
  6. Tule Lake, California: The former War Relocation Authority segregation center.

Congress appropriated funds in late 1951 and 1952 to rehabilitate and secure these facilities.[hcis-hearings-1970]

The Avon Park Facility on Standby (1951–1953)

At Avon Park, the Federal Bureau of Prisons leased an 800-acre cantonment tract from the Department of the Air Force.[jubilee-1964-prison][hearing-2001] The site encompassed eighteen two-story wooden barracks dormitories erected during World War II for bomber flight crews, alongside mess halls, administrative buildings, water and sewage infrastructure, and perimeter fencing.[hearing-2001]

The installation was maintained under a “standby” or “care-and-custody” status.[hcis-hearings-1970] In testimony before congressional appropriations subcommittees in 1952, Bureau of Prisons Director James V. Bennett reported that the emergency facilities were staffed only by minimal civilian maintenance and custodial crews, keeping the structures preserved and utilities functional without housing active convict populations.[hcis-hearings-1970] Because President Harry S. Truman never declared an internal security emergency under Title II, no civilian detainees were ever ordered to or held at the Avon Park camp.[hcis-hearings-1970][time-1969-detention]

De-funding, Closure, and Sublease to Florida

In 1953, following the armistice in the Korean War and under the incoming Eisenhower administration, congressional enthusiasm for maintaining standby detention facilities waned.[hcis-hearings-1970] Congress discontinued operational appropriations for Title II camp maintenance, leading the Department of Justice to close active operations at Avon Park and the other emergency sites in 1953.[hearing-2001][hcis-hearings-1970]

Although the standby camp was deactivated in 1953, the Federal Bureau of Prisons retained its underlying master lease on the 800-acre cantonment area from the United States Air Force.[jubilee-1964-prison][hearing-2001] In late 1956, facing acute overcrowding at the Florida State Prison at Raiford, Florida prison officials surveyed potential sites for an auxiliary minimum-security facility.[jubilee-1964-prison] Because the federal Bureau of Prisons still held the lease and the eighteen barracks remained intact, the State of Florida subleased the 800-acre site from the Bureau of Prisons in early 1957, establishing the Avon Park Correctional Institution in April 1957 under superintendent Louie L. Wainwright.[jubilee-1964-prison][hearing-2001] Later historical summaries in military environmental assessments mistakenly dated the opening of the state institution to 1951, conflating the federal camp’s establishment with the 1957 state sublease.[inrmp-2004]

Legislative Repeal and Federal Property Transfer

The existence of the standby emergency detention camps sparked intense civil liberties controversies throughout the 1960s, driven by concerns that the camps could be used for extrajudicial internment of political dissidents or racial minorities.[hcis-hearings-1970][time-1969-detention] Led by the Japanese American Citizens League and civil liberties organizations, a nationwide repeal campaign culminated in the passage of the Non-Detention Act of 1971 (Public Law 92-128, 85 Stat. 347).[pl-92-128] Approved by President Richard Nixon on 25 September 1971, the act repealed Title II in its entirety and enacted 18 U.S.C. § 4001(a), establishing that no citizen may be imprisoned or detained by the federal government except pursuant to an Act of Congress.[pl-92-128]

Shortly thereafter, the federal government declared the Avon Park cantonment surplus property.[hearing-2001] In the early 1970s, the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare donated 143 acres of the facility to the State of Florida, and the state purchased an additional 455 acres, establishing the permanent grounds of the state correctional institution and ending federal custodial jurisdiction over the former airfield cantonment.[hearing-2001]

References

Where this comes from

Evidence
corroborated — More than one independent source agrees.
Review
unverified — Drafted from sources but not yet checked by a volunteer.
Rights
society

Sources

  1. United States Congress, Internal Security Act of 1950, Title II — Emergency Detention Act of 1950 (Public Law 81-831, 64 Stat. 1019) (1950)
  2. United States House of Representatives, Committee on Government Reform, Sustaining Critical Military Training Facilities: Avon Park Air Force Range — hearing before the Subcommittee on National Security, Veterans Affairs and International Relations of the Committee on Government Reform, House of Representatives, 107th Congress, 4 August 2001, Serial No. 107-106; testimony of Dale Landress, Warden, Avon Park Correctional Institution (2001)
  3. United States House of Representatives, Committee on Internal Security, Hearings on H.R. 13453 and Related Bills, Directing the Repeal of the Emergency Detention Act of 1950, House Committee on Internal Security, 91st Congress, 2d Session (1970)
  4. TIME Magazine, Civil Liberties: The Phantom Camps (1969) · secondary
  5. United States Congress, Public Law 92-128, An Act to Repeal the Emergency Detention Act of 1950 (85 Stat. 347, 18 U.S.C. § 4001) (1971)
  6. Elaine Levey, Highlands News-Sun, The beginnings of the Avon Park prison — Historically Speaking, by Elaine Levey, reproducing the Avon Park Correctional Institution's own account in the 1964 Avon Park Diamond Jubilee booklet, Avon Park Depot Museum archives (2020) · secondary
  7. United States Air Force, Final Environmental Assessment: Implementation of the Integrated Natural Resources Management Plan for Avon Park Air Force Range, Florida (2004), DTIC ADA638923 (2004)

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