Update - Are Florida’s prisons failing Floridians?
Bottom Line: Yesterday I brought you a story depicting many critical concerns by Florida’s Secretary of the Department of Corrections, Mark Inch. Among them...
- The multi-year decline of Florida’s prison system rating (now marginal)
- Well above average turnover of prison guards
- Lower qualified and increasingly corrupt prison guards
- 70% of Florida’s inmates have substance abuse issues
- 47% of current inmates are repeat offenders
- 14th highest incarceration rate nationally
There was much more to the story but that’s plenty for the point of this follow up. We have problems in our prison system that are getting worse and it threatens to reverse the progress Florida has made in reducing crime since 2008 if we don’t begin to address these concerns. After reaching out to Mark Inch to further gain perspective on his ideas – we received lots of additional information from his office. As it turns out, Governor DeSantis is accounting for these concerns in his proposed budget. All in, the governor is proposing nearly $100 million for improvements in Florida’s prison system. Among them...
- $60+ million for raises and retention incentives
- 8.5-hour shifts
- New Inspector General oversight
- $3 million for additional safety equipment
- $1.4 million for Education Expansion for inmates
- $4 million for vocational education
- $17 million for health services
- $9 million for renovations of facilities
Basically, it checks all the boxes and potentially then some, that Secretary Inch asked for. If Governor DeSantis’s budget for the state Department of Corrections goes through as proposed, all of this will come to pass. Based on the estimates I put together yesterday, we’d potentially see a decline in the Florida prison population of 20,000 once these policies would be fully implemented. That’s a decline of close to 20%. That would also save the state of Florida $380 million annually, $280 million net, in costs in the future. This sounds like a win, win, win. To be continued...