Prison guards deserve better pay

Gov. Rick Scott called recently for a salary hike for 4,000 state law-enforcement officers in next year’s budget. They’re a deserving group, as the governor pointed out.

Yet there was a gaping hole in his proposal: the 22,000 correctional officers in state prisons. It was only when questioned by reporters that the governor said he wouldn’t rule out raises for prison guards.

The impression was inescapable that the state’s struggling prison system remains an afterthought in Tallahassee, instead of a top priority. This attention deficit in state policy threatens public safety and ultimately puts a heavier burden on taxpayers, who already shell out more than $2 billion a year — more than they spend for state colleges — to house nearly 100,000 inmates in Florida prisons.

Corrections officers haven’t received a raise in almost a decade. They are near the bottom for wages among the 10 biggest state prison systems, with a starting salary of less than $31,000 a year. Their low pay leads to high turnover, as officers bolt as soon as they can for better salaries with local law-enforcement agencies. State prisons are understaffed, and the overworked officers who remain tend to be less experienced.

That makes facilities more dangerous for officers and inmates alike.

Inmates have caused at least six “major disturbances” at Florida prisons this year, according to the Department of Corrections. The most recent took place Nov. 29 at Franklin Correctional Institution. In the most serious one, in June, about 300 inmates trashed two housing dorms at Franklin.

But low pay is just a symptom of a broader malady in Florida prisons. An outside audit of the system commissioned last year by the Legislature found crumbling facilities, outdated security and inadequate rehabilitation programs for inmates. Inmates deprived of opportunities for rehabilitation behind bars are at greater risk of returning to crime after they are released.

Florida’s prison system cries out for an independent, top-to-bottom review of its policies — what works and what doesn’t. It needs a long-term plan to tackle its biggest challenges. It lacks the kind of outside oversight that would spotlight problems and apply more pressure to fix them.

These strategies have been successfully adopted in other states. Proposals to do so in Florida have been met with resistance from the governor and the Corrections Department. The Scott administration seems more interested in circling the wagons against critics.

Recently, Corrections agreed to pay $800,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by employees who alleged that the department’s inspector general had retaliated against them for reporting inmate abuse. Later, that official was transferred to another, newly created, high-paying position. And the Miami Herald reported that the state’s chief inspector general, Melinda Miguel, did nothing when warned about the possible cover-ups of two suspicious prison deaths, except forward the letter to the people accused of hiding the deaths.

Thirty-three states — but not Florida — have demonstrated their commitment to prison reform through the Justice Reinvestment Initiative, a public-private partnership launched in 2007 that includes the U.S. Justice Department, the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Council of State Governments and other organizations. The participating states — both red and blue — have changed laws and policies to prioritize their prison space for serious and repeat offenders.

These reforms have reduced the prison populations in these states, and made more dollars available to re-invest in better rehabilitation programs and cheaper alternatives to incarceration for low-level offenders. At the same time, their crime rates have continued to come down.

By following the best practices of other states, Florida could save enough money to pay more competitive salaries to correctional officers.

But better pay is only part of the solution.