Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Bipartisan support for sentencing reform
TALLAHASSEE – Dexter Gunn first went to prison in the 1980s when the crack cocaine epidemic raged in South Florida’s poor and mostly black neighborhoods.
Jeff Brandes is a Republican state senator from Pinellas County who served in the Iraq War.
Both agree Florida’s criminal justice system isn’t working the way it should. Both want to see changes made this legislative session that would move the state away from hard-line mandatory minimum sentences and give judges more flexibility.
“The state has over 100 different mandatory minimums, and we catch all kinds of dolphins in the tuna net,” Brandes said while explaining his reform bill earlier this month. “It is just amazing to see how damaging no discretion to judges is in this process.”
It’s one area in America’s fractured political environment where some common ground can be found. Amid partisan fighting over immigration, Republicans and Democrats in Washington united to pass modest criminal justice reform at the federal level.
Advocacy groups are optimistic that Tallahassee will follow Washington’s lead and start moving away from the tough-on-crime stance politicians have embraced in the past.
Their central message: Florida is locking up too many people for too long. It’s burdening taxpayers, and it’s doing little to rehabilitate offenders or make communities safer.
With a budget of $2.4 billion, Florida operates the third largest correctional system in the country. More than 96,000 Floridians are in state prisons and another 166,000 are under community supervision.
Gunn, 51, a Fort Lauderdale resident, said he experienced the system’s flaws while serving a 30-year sentence after he was labeled a “habitual offender” and convicted of attempted robbery. Punishments got harsher while educational and other rehabilitative programs were cut, he said.
“A lot of inmates don’t have an incentive to maintain good behavior and positive attitudes,” Gunn said. “If you lock a person up and you tell him there’s absolutely no way he can get out, he just figures it is better to join a gang,”
Reform bills filed
The federal First Step Act expanded rehabilitation programs in prisons and reduced mandatory minimum sentences for repeat nonviolent drug offenses at the federal level.
Florida will take up a bill that would make similar changes at the state level. Florida’s First Step Act would authorize judges to depart from mandatory minimum sentences in some drug trafficking cases. It would instruct the Department of Corrections to place offenders in prisons within 300 miles of their residence, a measure intended to ease the burden on families visiting inmates.
The proposal (SB 642/ HB 705) also would create an entrepreneurship program for prisoners and give inmates a break on their sentence if they complete it.
Several other criminal justice bills are pending in the Legislature.
SB 704 would require changes to criminal statutes to be applied retroactively. That means people could apply for relief who were sentenced under harsher penalties.
SB 734/ HB 1013 would end the practice of suspending driver’s licenses for nondriving offenses, such as failure to pay court fees, drug possession or misdemeanor theft. Supporters say suspending licenses harm people by taking away their ability to maintain employment, leading to more encounters with the criminal justice system.
SB 394/ HB 667 would prohibit government agencies from inquiring about a person’s criminal history on the initial application. It also would prohibit public colleges and universities from considering an applicant’s criminal history during the selection process. Another measure (SB 334/ HB 397) would change the process for licensing to allow people with convictions on their records to obtain barbering, construction and other professional licenses issued by the state.
SB 624/ HB 755 would ban solitary confinement for inmates 19 or younger unless an emergency exists, and it’s determined they are are a risk to themselves or others.
As crime falls, prison costs rise
Although Florida’s violent crime rate has dropped nearly 60 percent over the past two decades, spending on prisons and corrections has been going up, due in part to an aging inmate population.
Some see that as evidence tough sentencing laws have worked, while others question why the prison budget hasn’t also dropped with falling crime rates.
Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said the money spent locking up violent offenders has been a “small price to pay for safety and security.” He is not sympathetic to pleas for more lenient sentences.
“They are whining and crying about having to pay their debt to society,” Judd said. “If you change these laws, crime will go up. People will die. They will be murdered.”
He said first-time offenders already get breaks through pre-trial diversion and other programs that allow them to avoid jail time.
No definitive cause has been identified for declining crime rates. Experts have suggested everything from the removal of lead additives from gasoline to improved community policing strategies to the Roe v. Wade abortion ruling, which meant fewer children born in poverty.
Supporters of criminal justice reform say the state is on an unsustainable path as inmates age and require more medical care, and judges ought to have more control over the length of sentences. Last year, the Department of Corrections cut mental health, substance abuse and re-entry programs to plug a $50 million budget shortfall in its health care budget.
The average inmate is now more than 40 years old, as opposed to 32 in 1996.
Reform advocates say many of these older inmates have changed, and they no longer pose a threat to society.
One proposal (SB 346/ HB 607) would grant a “conditional medical release” to sick and frail inmates who are deemed to have a low chance of committing another offense.
Advocates flock to Capitol
Advocacy groups want Florida’s First Step Act to go further. They want more allowances for judges to go outside mandatory minimum sentences, as well as retroactivity so offenders sentenced under older, harsher laws could be released. They also support a racial impact study that would look for disparities in how new state laws are implemented.
Blacks make up about 17 percent of the state’s population, but about 47 percent of the state’s prison population is black.
“The current version of the Florida First Step Act is a baby step at best,” said Micah Kubic, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida “It is not a bold reform. It needs to be improved.”
Gunn traveled from Fort Lauderdale to speak with lawmakers. Groups have carpooled and taken buses to the capital to rally and share their stories with lawmakers.
Gunn first went to prison for a robbery he committed when he was 17. In 1993, he was labeled a “habitual offender” after being convicted of attempted robbery and was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
He was released in 2011. Now, he owns his own legal documents company.
Audrey Jennings-Hudgins, is seeking relief for her son, William, who was sentenced at the age of 22 to life in prison for robberies he committed in St. Lucie County.
Even though he had not physically harmed anyone, he was given a life sentence two decades ago under the state’s reoffender law. He’d been dubbed the “gentleman robber” by local law enforcement in previous cases because he didn’t use a real gun and asked nicely for money, according to a 1998 article in The Stuart News.
“I have no discretion in sentencing this defendant,” The Stuart News quoted the judge saying. “I have no choice.”
Jennings-Hudgins said reforms should go beyond mandatory minimum sentences for low-level nonviolent drug offenses and include other, more serious crimes if the facts warrant consideration.
She said her son would have received a 16-year sentence had it not been for the state’s prison reoffender law. The mandatory sentencing guideline mandates the maximum penalty if a person commits a felony within three years of being released from prison.
“His life sentence, along with all other unjust sentences, goes beyond serving justice and becomes nothing more than cruel and unusual punishment that everyone pays for,” she said.
President Donald Trump signed criminal justice reform and touted it in his State of the Union address. Whether Gov. Ron DeSantis, one of his allies, will seek to make it a legacy of his administration remains to be seen.
“At the end of the day, I want to keep the public safe,” DeSantis said. “I want to hold people accountable, but I also recognize that there are some instances in which folks have paid their debt, and we are probably wasting money. They are not a threat to society.”