More tax dollars won’t solve dire prison crisis in Florida
Last year, a Florida inmate at Martin Correctional Institution used a hidden camera to document the conditions there. It showed inmates living in mold-infested squalor, passed out on synthetic drugs and continuous, horrific violence.
The video documents for the public what most legislators already knew: Florida’s prisons are crumbling. Illegal drugs are rampant. Assaults against inmates have gone up 67% since 2013. The gang population inside has risen 140% during the same period. Turnover among guards has increased 150%. Folks are dying from inadequate health care.
Brutality. Abuse. Neglect. These are recipes for disaster.
State Sen. Jeff Brandes (R-St. Petersburg) has called Florida’s prisons a “ticking time bomb.” Mark Inch, the Secretary for the Florida Department of Corrections has likened our current trajectory to a “death spiral.”
Unfortunately, the conversation in Tallahassee has focused mostly on how best to throw more money at the problem. In his 2020 budget proposal, Gov. Ron DeSantis proposed over $100 million in new funding for guard retention initiatives and health care.
Florida already spends $2.7 billion per year on its prisons, housing 95,000 inmates. Throwing more money at this problem is not going to solve it.
If the Legislature truly wants to solve our prison crisis, it must focus on reducing the prison population. When your house is flooding, you don’t build a better house. You turn off the water.
HB189 and SB394 are good places to start. Current Florida law requires that inmates serve at least 85% of their prison sentences, regardless of how well they’ve rehabilitated once inside. These bills would retroactively reduce that number to 65% for people convicted of most nonviolent offenses, allowing thousands of nonviolent folks to be released from prison and saving the state an estimated $860 million.
We must also address our aging prison population. Over the last 10 years, the number of inmates over the age of 50 has increased by 77%. Continuing to incarcerate many of these folks, decades after their crimes, is costing us millions and is not keeping us any safer. The Legislature should retroactively repeal mandatory minimum sentences, including Prison Releasee Reoffenders sentences. It should also expand the ability for compassionate release and re-institute a meaningful parole system.
We must also rethink who we send to prison. The Florida Criminal Punishment Code Task Force has convened this year to make recommendations on how to revise Florida’s method of calculating whether any given offense requires a prison sentence. The Task Force should consider raising the total points required for someone to be sentenced to prison and re-institute a cap or maximum prison sentence.
Finally, we can’t just rely on the Legislature to fix this. Our local law enforcement, judges, prosecutors and communities must implement innovative ways to keep as many folks out of prison who aren’t a danger as possible. Our prison system is in a crisis. We all should act like it.
Joe Kimok is a Major Crimes Attorney with the Office of Criminal Conflict and Civil Regional Counsel in Fort Lauderdale, the President of the Broward Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and a candidate for Broward State Attorney in 2020.