Florence prison closure comes as shock to some; what happens next?
Gov. Doug Ducey devoted just two lines of his Monday State of the State address to the announcement — in less than 25 seconds, he was on to other topics.
But in the aftermath, municipal leaders, justice reform advocates and families with incarcerated loved ones remain rattled by the decision to shut down the aging state prison complex in
Florence, expressing shock at the news and confusion about what happens next.
“The Town is startled by this sudden announcement,” Florence leaders said in a statement, citing a potential $1.3 million impact on the town and vowing to “find a solution that is appropriate for our community, our residents and the many employees that call Florence home for eight to twelve hours per day.”
“The Florence State Prison is a historic landmark and is woven into the very fabric of Florence,” they said. “In his speech … the governor referenced ‘The Arizona Way.’ The Arizona Way means taking care of all our residents — not just our prisoners, but also the rural communities in which they live and the jobs which they support.”
The Governor’s Office has attempted to allay concerns by painting the closure as a positive for everyone involved.
Taxpayers will see a $274 million savings over three years, Ducey said, as the state avoids costly repair and maintenance expenses at the 100-year-oldplus prison. The nearly 4,000 men incarcerated at the Florence complex will move to county facilities, private prisons or other state buildings with the capacity to take them, according to the Governor’s Office.
And the state will preserve Florence officers’ jobs by transferring them to the Eyman facility just three miles away, addressing a persistent staffing shortage there while “providing inmates with better access to programs and other services,” the Governor’s Office said.
While nearly everyone interviewed by The Arizona Republic agreed it was time to close the Florence complex, they weren’t convinced the governor’s transition plan was the best — or safest — approach.
“We’re very supportive of closing prisons that are virtually uninhabitable, and the Florence facilities are old and dangerous,” said Caroline Isaacs, program director for the American Friends Service Committee-Arizona, a justice reform organization.
“But if the focus here is providing appropriate and accessible treatment and education services — private prisons have terrible track records in terms of treatment of incarcerated people, and county jails are designed as short-term facilities.
“What this plan appears to be doing is reshuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic.”
The Governor’s Office has promised more specifics regarding the closure plan on Friday, when Ducey releases his executive budget proposal. A spokesman on Wednesday said that shutting down the prison “effectively and safely” would require legislative approval of items in that proposal.
In the meantime, here’s a closer look at what’s known about the details released to date and the questions surrounding them.
1. Was this a surprise announcement?
State Rep. T.J. Shope, a Republican lawmaker whose district includes Florence, said he was unaware Ducey planned to announce the closure Monday.
But he said Florence officials “had known this was a possibility for several years” and vowed to act as a liaison for them, “seeking as many answers as they have questions.”
“This is probably a decision that should’ve happened many years ago,” Shope said. “There’s only so much 21st century technology you can add to such an aging building and still keep it safe for the officers and inmates.”
Town officials, on the other hand, said they had “sticker shock” after running the numbers on the closure.
“Within the Florence State Prison, you can find Arizona Correctional Industries (ACI) — a fabulous asset where tens of millions of dollars of industrial, commercial and residential products are made and distributed to Arizona establishments each year,” they said in a statement.
“ACI Ranch cultivates nearly 450 acres of land in Florence, and regularly harvests a variety of forage crops. Inmate labor is used around the region to help beautify streets and maintain landscaping. We simply cannot afford to suddenly flip a switch and allow these programs to disappear from our region.”
The Governor’s Office has not provided information regarding how the closure would affect those programs.
2. What are benefits, risks of sending state prisoners to county jails?
The Governor’s Office said Monday that counties “have been wanting for a long time to take more of these folks” — likely because they could receive state money if they fill vacant beds with state prisoners.
“Frankly, I have been working for several years to allow counties to enter into contracts with state Department of Corrections to be able to house state inmates,” Shope said, mentioning Apache and Pinal as examples of counties with “a number of beds available.”
“For some of these low-level offenders, if they’re able to spend more time in their county where they’re from, if they’re able to have more regular contact with their families, studies have shown they may have fewer problems in prison and less of a chance of repeat offenses,” he said. “I think that anything we can do in that realm, we should encourage.”
Officials from several counties, including Apache, said they hadn’t been briefed on the transfers.
“I haven’t heard a peep,” Dayson Merrill, a sergeant with the Apache County Sheriff’s Office, told The Republic. “You probably have more information than I do … We’re not even equipped to house state inmates — they require specific things, and our facility doesn’t have them.”
Donna Hamm, executive director of inmate-rights organization Middle Ground Prison Reform, argued that “county jail facilities are totally inappropriate and ill-equipped for long-term prisoners” for the same reason.
“They don’t have educational programs. They don’t have in-person visitation. They’re not designed to be places where someone serving decades in prison or even multiple years in prison should be held,” she said. “So we’re concerned.”
It’s unclear whether the state plans to relocate only non-violent, low-level offenders to county facilities. A ProPublica investigation published last year found a surge in deadly violence in California’s county jails after the state began sending people there rather than incarcerating them in state prisons.
“Since 2011, when the U.S. Supreme Court ordered California to overhaul its overcrowded prisons, inmate-on-inmate homicides have risen 46% in county jails statewide compared with the seven years before,” the analysis of California Department of Justice data and autopsy records showed.
Isaacs, with AFSC-AZ, said if the people Arizona plans to put in county jails are indeed non-violent and low-risk, the state should consider sentencing reforms that could offer a pathway out of prison entirely.
“Almost every other state has done this successfully, so the fact that there’s so little discussion about that aspect — for which there is broad bipartisan support — here is a little puzzling,” she said. “If we have fewer people in prisons and jails and there are beds vacant, that should be a good thing. These are not hotel rooms that we’re looking to fill.”
3. When would the prison close?
The Governor’s Office has stressed that the prison closure will take time — possibly up to two years.
“It’s going to be a lot of work in terms of coordinating with the counties, with the other prisons where we’re moving them to, and also being very sensitive to the Florence and Pinal County communities — impact on jobs, impact on the local economy, what you do with the existing facility, etc.,” a Ducey aide said. “So, this isn’t going to happen overnight.”
In a joint statement Wednesday, Shope and other District 8 lawmakers — Republican Rep. David Cook and Republican Sen. Frank Pratt — said they looked forward to “learning more detailed information from the Governor, including his
The Florence prison currently houses just under 100 people sentenced to death. It’s likely the state will transfer them to the Eyman complex, which houses the other men on death row. Women on death row are housed at a separate prison complex.
The state’s execution chamber will remain at the Florence prison, according to the Governor’s Office. Asked if that meant the Florence complex wasn’t closing entirely, an aide said, “Well, you don’t have to operate there.”
Arizona hasn’t put anyone to death since 2014, when a cocktail of execution drugs left Joseph Rudolph Wood gasping for nearly two hours before he died.
But in July, after the federal government announced it was taking steps to resume executions, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich asked Ducey for help obtaining the execution drug pentobarbital so the state could do the same.
5. Will private prisons benefit?
The Governor’s Office indicated that for-profit prisons would receive some of the Florence transfers but could not immediately say how many, making it difficult to estimate how much for-profit prisons might make off the closure.
Staff said they were still working to determine capacity at county facilities, where the Governor’s Office said prisoners will be sent first.
Private prisons generally do not accept offenders with expensive needs or high custody classifications, meaning those who require heightened supervision. That would rule out the roughly 235 people Florence currently has in maximum custody and the more than 800 held in close custody. And it again raises the question of whether violent offenders and those convicted of sex crimes could end up in county jails.
“I don’t know where they’re intending to put these folks,” said Hamm, with Middle Ground Prison Reform.
The Florence facility has about 1,300 minimum-custody offenders and about 1,645 requiring medium custody, according to the Department of Corrections.