State poised to increase budget for prison programming

Can you imagine the draw of a heavyweight boxing champion on the prison circuit? You’ve seen it hinted in scores of television shows and movies, but you wouldn’t believe the athletic and intellectual talent trapped in the maw of our criminal justice system. After decades of ceaseless fear-mongering and piling on sentence enhancement after enhancement, Florida currently warehouses enough people to fill a medium-sized city. Unfortunately, Florida does not fund an “official” prison boxing league, but we do have wellness and educational programming.

The good news is that, despite other highly oppressive policies passed this year, the 2023 legislative session is poised to close with a substantial increase to the budget for prison programming. Currently, 85% of the incarcerated have no access to any programming for drug addiction, wellness, academic education or vocational skills. These people have nothing to do all day and night except be anxious and afraid, constrained in prison with no way to better themselves or prepare for re-entry to support their families.

This increase in prison programming is a positive turn for anyone with a loved one behind bars, perhaps indicating a shift in tone from our lawmakers. Since the 1990s, and an unending onslaught of tough-on-crime legislation, it seems our lawmakers have decided to finally get “smart on crime” and address root causes.

There are only so many times you can kidnap, traffic, and cage a person (for years) before you finally realize that educational training or therapy or both would have prevented the problem to begin with. The data shows that sentence length has no correlation to recidivism, but programs have been shown to effectively reduce recidivism in the U.S. and across the globe. FDC, by its own data, reports that education programming reduces recidivism risk by 13 percentage points.

In our prison, we are fortunate to have a growing wellness program and education department. Incarcerated people who can sign up for the Wellness Class spend time exercising and learning about physical education, meditation, yoga, and the coordination of prison-wide events (e.g., the greatly anticipated semi-annual chess tournament). We recently finished a basketball tournament in honor of March Madness, as well as a relay race and 15K. Whereas, other educational programs such as GED, Plumbing, or Masonry are more career focused.

And, although there is a lengthy wait list to enroll in programming, perhaps this year’s budgetary bump will help increase much needed access to these vital programs for our people’s restoration.

The grounds and equipment for some events would be laughable to the average non-incarcerated person. For example, the recent 15K race consisted of repeatedly running around a small dirt track with zero shade and full sun. That’s 9.3 miles of spinning in a circle. But, to us, these events mean hope, a few moments of wind at our backs, and a whisper of redemption. Each GED or Plumbing certificate earned offers a new beginning. Every brick laid on the path to becoming a mason creates an opportunity for which the mistakes of our past do not have to define our future.

Pundits may call this prisoner programming, as if we are mindless malfeasants lacking personhood or decision-making ability, but — to us — these programs offer a reason to believe in a hopeful future again. The question becomes, if 90% of us are supposed to re-enter society, are we supposed to sit in cages and shackles like Hannibal Lecter or at desks learning a meaningful skill?

The answer is both. For now.