Pubdate: Sat, 02 Apr 2011
Source: St. Petersburg Times (FL)
Copyright: 2011 St. Petersburg Times
Contact: http://www.sptimes.com/letters/
Website: http://www.tampabay.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/419

FRESH IDEAS FOR PRISONS

Ed Buss has been on the job for less than two months, but Florida's 
new secretary of the Department of Corrections is off to a promising 
start. He is not interested in the tough-on-crime platitudes that 
have dominated state lawmaking for years. As the former head of the 
Indiana prison system, Buss knows that reducing a large prison 
population means keeping low-risk offenders out of prison and helping 
them to stay out. He would accomplish this by embracing progressive 
approaches to corrections reform such as ending some mandatory 
minimum sentencing. Whether Buss can get his agenda through the 
Legislature and the corrections officers union remains to be seen. 
Some of his ideas take the wrong direction, but many are worth pursuing.

As an outsider coming into the insular Department of Corrections, 
Buss has the experience and freedom to make needed changes. He 
already has fired more than a dozen top administrators from the 
ossified corrections hierarchy. He's looking at efficiencies in the 
way the department is structured, such as switching corrections 
officers from an eight-hour to a 12-hour shift. But his best ideas 
are those that would address recidivism by investing in prevention 
programs such as literacy, mental health and substance abuse treatment.

Housing inmates is expensive, and Florida has 102,000 of them. The 
state has the nation's third-largest penal system, costing more than 
$2.4 billion annually -- more than twice what the state spends for 
its community college system. But despite the nearly $20,000 
taxpayers spend to keep each inmate imprisoned for a year, there is 
not nearly enough spent to prepare these men and women to re-enter 
society upon release.

Buss wants to end the era of "tough love" for young offenders, which 
hasn't reduced crime. He endorses a refreshingly evidence-based 
approach with an emphasis on early intervention programs, vocational 
and educational training and drug treatment. Inevitably these 
investments will lower Florida's recidivism rate, which stands at 
about 33 percent over three years.

Buss is an encouraging appointment by Gov. Rick Scott, but where 
Scott's corrections program goes awry is in his attempt to wring 
millions of dollars from the budget by shifting to private prisons 
and probation services. Buss also wants to privatize all prison 
health care programs -- something with which the state has had woeful 
experience. Injecting a profit motive into the provision of inmate 
health care is a recipe for abuse. Research shows private prisons 
save little if any money and have a questionable track record.

In other areas, Buss sounds positively progressive, such as his calls 
for abolishing certain mandatory minimum sentences and giving judges 
more discretion to divert people from prison if they don't belong 
there. Florida has clogged its criminal code with mandatory minimum 
sentences that cost the state in high incarceration rates as well as 
the loss of potentially productive members of society.

Buss had great success in Indiana, bringing efficiencies to that 
system and reducing the adult prison population. His attempt to 
transfer some of those methods to Florida is encouraging. 
- ---
MAP posted-by: Richard Lake