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Recovery in the News
Crist embraces new prison tack: coaching inmates for life outside
Dara Kam
Palm Beach Post Capital Bureau
May 23, 2007
TALLAHASSEE — Gov. Charlie Crist's administration on Tuesday announced a revamp of corrections policies aimed at keeping former inmates from winding up back behind bars.
The new policy is a marked shift for the Florida Department of Corrections, which years ago abandoned a policy of rehabilitating prisoners in favor of a more punitive approach that imposed longer sentences and did away with so-called perks such as air conditioning.
Correctional changes
The Florida Department of Corrections wants to reduce its recidivism rate from more than 30 percent to 20 percent or less by 2012 by taking these measures:
- Increasing substance abuse treatment for inmates from 19 percent to 25 percent. About two-thirds of the system's 90,000 inmates are substance abusers.
- Collaborating with the construction industry, Habitat for Humanity and Prison Rehabilitative Industries and Diversified Enterprises Inc. to train inmates in construction jobs.
- Improving the reading level of inmates. At least 4,000 inmates currently read at a first- or second-grade level.
- Getting more inmates driver's licenses or other Florida identification cards. Fewer than 60 percent of inmates released have current identification allowing them to travel and get a job.
- Ensuring that released inmates are taken to their first mental health services appointment, in the hope that doing so will get them into the system and keep them receiving services.
- Developing and expanding resources to allow ex-offenders to tap into communityservices such as mental health, substance abuse, housing and employment services.
"It's time to stop doing things the way we've been doing it. We've got to stop locking them up and throwing away the key," said Hieteenthia "Tina'' Hayes, the new head of the reentry program initiated by Corrections Secretary Jim McDonough, with Crist's approval.
Crist, a Republican who boasts of the nickname "Chain Gang Charlie," has given the revised mission "his blessing," according to McDonough, appointed by Gov. Jeb Bush and reappointed by Crist.
The modified mission appears to be a departure from Crist's history. As a state senator, he pushed a measure forcing prison inmates to work on chain gangs, hence the moniker, and this year he persuaded lawmakers to pass the so-called "Anti-Murder Act," which would require violent offenders who violate probation to be returned to prison unless a judge rules otherwise in writing.
But Crist said Tuesday, "If you just look at sort of the nickname alone, I can understand that it could be a little confusing. But it really goes down to fundamental fairness. If you believe in fundamental fairness for people who have made a mistake, a serious one, perhaps, and have the opportunity to rehabilitate themselves, I think that's fundamentally fair. If on the other hand you have people who have been terribly unkind to innocent Floridians, then the notion of appropriate punishment is not inappropriate."
Crist also said that although he agrees with the new policy, "the specific idea discussed today, I think, is the secretary's. And I applaud him for it."
McDonough, Gov. Bush's former drug czar, acknowledged that finding the dollars to pay for more programs would be challenging but that federal grants will help the effort. He also said his department has already begun working with the state's labor department, the Agency for Workforce Innovation; the Florida Home Builders Association; and the state's Habitat for Humanity program in addition to its own public-private partnership known as PRIDE. It runs the state prison industries that manufacture corrugated boxes, dentures, furniture, clothing and license plates.
McDonough said the changes are an "anti-crime effort" meant to enhance public safety and save the state money by keeping the one-third of prisoners who typically return to prison from committing new crimes.
According to department estimates, about 12,000 of the 36,000 inmates scheduled to be released from prison within 12 months will eventually return.
That recidivism rate would cost the state millions of dollars for new prisons and corrections officers, according to a report released in December.
McDonough said the effort would provide opportunities for inmates beginning on their first day of incarceration, which would better enable them to rejoin society after being locked up.
He said the state also would beef up efforts to combat substance abuse and mental health illnesses, from which the vast majority of inmates suffer.
But he said the new initiative would not expand the use of faith-based providers, a program pushed by Bush but that McDonough said has not yet proved successful. McDonough rejected efforts to expand the three faith-based prison programs despite pressure from Bush's office to do so.
The data demonstrating that education and substance-abuse initiatives are successful "is absolute," he said.
But the same cannot be said of faith-based programs, McDonough said.
"We're in the midst of an experiment, and I want to get that data," he said of the faith-based programs.
McDonough, however, said he believed the state had "excellent grounds" to defend itself against a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of state funding for religious institutions to provide substance abuse counseling.
Nearly two-thirds of inmates require substance abuse treatment, but fewer than 1 in 5 receive it, McDonough said. And, he said, more than half of state prisons lack vocational or educational programs.
Copyright © 2007, The Palm Beach Post. All rights reserved