Sending troops to state prisons is risky and short-sighted

With a budget plumped up by billions in federal relief money, Florida began the current fiscal year with a record surplus of $22 billion.

That’s almost what it costs to run the state of Connecticut for a year. Yet the state won’t pay front-line correctional officers a decent enough hourly wage to provide more than skeleton crews in state prisons. Staffing is so dire that Gov. Ron DeSantis wants to call up the National Guard.

So as all those billions sit in a bank, DeSantis and the Department of Corrections will send up to 300 Guardsmen to take the place of trained but underpaid correctional officers for at least nine months.

The same troops who rescue people, clear debris and restore order after hurricanes would be deployed to remote rural outposts in decrepit buildings in 90-degree heat with no air conditioning, in places like Avon Park, Bristol, Cross City and Raiford.

It’s short-sighted, risky, wildly expensive and politically expedient. It’s one more short-term fix that allows the governor and Legislature to avoid making tougher and more responsible decisions.

“It’s just appalling,” Rep. Fentrice Driskell, D-Tampa, the incoming House Democratic leader, said Friday. “This seems neither safe nor fiscally responsible. And by the way, this is not what people signed up for when they joined the National Guard. This is not what they trained for.”

The temporary fix won approval Friday from a panel of 14 lawmakers known as the Joint Legislative Budget Commission, which meets sporadically to approve mid-year spending decisions. But sending Guard troops to prisons for nearly a year should not be made in slapdash fashion by a handful of lawmakers on a Friday afternoon. This policy shift should have required full legislative approval.

Legislators shifted $31.25 million in general tax revenue to the Department of Military Affairs to pay salaries and expenses, but a bare-bones staff report didn’t specify how many guard troops would be activated, or where, or when.

“The scope of duties performed by the (Guard members) during the activation period will be clearly articulated by the FDC (Florida Department of Corrections) and exclude any direct supervision of inmates, except where such supervision occurs as a normal part of manning control stations or when required in an emergency situation pertaining to safety and security,” the proposal said. “The Guard members will provide temporary relief to help support current staff and provide the FDC additional time and resources to hire and train new staff through increased recruitment and retention efforts.”

Feeding and housing troops for that long costs money. That’s why, as the fine print explains, the first $24 million includes $13.5 million for salaries and $10.5 million for “expenditures.” The remaining $7.25 million is set aside for moving inmates to county jails, “as needed,” the proposal says.

The terrible conditions in the nation’s third-largest prison system keep getting worse. Sen. Jeff Brandes, R-St. Petersburg, continually sounded alarms, describing the system as a “powder keg” with so many unfilled jobs that some prison dorms had to be closed, and overtime at staggering levels. And Brandes raised that red flag three years ago this month — before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Worse, Brandes, the Legislature’s most thoughtful member on criminal justice issues, will be forced out in November due to term limits. He has forcefully and repeatedly raised the same issues: Too many nonviolent offenders are behind bars, their sentences are too long and they get little if any help making the transition to returning citizens. Florida’s prison system is a huge drain on taxpayers with little or no return.

The Southern Poverty Law Center Action Fund wants the Legislature to use the staffing crisis to implement systemic changes, such as permanently reducing Florida’s prison population.

“The answer is not bringing in the National Guard, an expensive and inadequate Band-Aid,” said the SPLC’s Delvin Davis. “The answer is reducing the prison population ... Getting nonviolent drug offenders, the elderly and those who can clearly be rehabilitated out of cages would help solve this problem without the drain on taxpayers of bringing in the costly National Guard, a group that is not designed to be corrections officers.”

Governors come and go and Florida prisons keep getting worse. Corrections Secretary Ricky Dixon told legislators in February that he had nearly 6,000 vacancies, nearly a fourth of the agency’s budgeted total.

The response from DeSantis and the Legislature was a 5.4% pay raise for all state employees and a minimum $20-an-hour salary for correctional officers.

It’s better than nothing, but not nearly enough. Meanwhile, that $22 billion sits in the bank.