Florida: Prison Privatization Won't Cut It

That's the message of this excellent editorial from the Orlando Sentinel this week, as Florida continues plans to turn prisons over to private management to save money.  Here's the whole thing, because it's so good:

Seek Savings Beyond Privatizing Prisons

In preparing a massive change to shave $22 million from its prison budget, the state is overlooking other reforms that could save plenty more money.

The state Department of Corrections is readying to complete the largest prison privatization project in the country. On Jan. 1, if all goes according to schedule, 29 state prisons in 18 Florida counties will be operated by private companies.

The operative word is scheduled.

Already the plan's bleeding $25 million in red ink, according to an internal email between Department of Corrections officials. The additional cost owes to compensatory time and vacation and sick leave the state would have to shell out for some 4,000 prison workers who lose their jobs.

Concurrently, DOC put the kibosh on seeking bids to privatize prison health-care services statewide. And the process could be halted by a lawsuit filed by the Florida Police Benevolent Association on behalf of unionized prison guards.

Privatizing prisons won't be the end of the world. The state has already privatized seven facilities.

Our concern is that this next, much larger stage of privatization has eclipsed and shelved potentially more fruitful, cost-effective changes. One of those is sentencing reform.

Florida has an inmate population of 102,000 men and women locked up in 144 facilities. It costs, on average, $19,469 per year to house an inmate. The corrections budget is $2.3 billion.

Advocates and lawmakers have argued — convincingly — that the state judiciary has been required to lock up many non-violent drug users when cheaper alternatives could have been employed. It makes sense that a pain pill addict caught buying or in possession of 24 grams of pills might fare better — and at much less expense to taxpayers — in drug treatment than in a 15-year sentence.

But good luck trying to convince lawmakers jittery about being labeled as soft on crime.

Just this past legislative session, state Sen. Ellyn Bogdanoff, R-Fort Lauderdale, and state Rep. Ari Porth, D-Coral Springs, offered a proposal to give judges more leeway in fashioning sentences to fit an offense. Ed Buss, the head of the Department of Corrections, was on record saying he supported giving judges more discretion.

Yet, the legislation failed.

And so, now, the state is planning a massive hand-over of prison management to save money. Sounds to us like a better option would be to let judges do the job they are best suited for: dispensing justice.