FL- Get-tough stand is too expensive, isn't productive

7-28-2009 Florida:

It's not enough to know we've overreacted. Not hardly. Not when it comes to criminal justice.

Not even when it becomes obvious that ``get tough'' policies have become counterproductive and insanely expensive.

Florida's get-tough sentencing policies have packed the state's 60 prisons with 100,000 prisoners, too many of them of the non-violent, drug-addicted variety. We'll spend $2.4 billion this year to warehouse state prisoners. The trend lines indicate we'll need another 15 prisons within the next five years to maintain our irrational exuberance for harsh sentences with no rehab.

PRISON COSTS RISING

Prison costs go up in a budget-slashing year because we insist on packing druggies and juvies off to prison while spending relatively little on counseling or drug treatment or job training or in-prison education. Half of Florida's inmates, released unprepared to cope with the outside world, re-offend.

Earlier this month, Florida's Collins Center for Public Policy sent ``an open letter to the governor, the Legislature and the people of Florida,'' asking for ``a bold and serious conversation about justice reform.''

Florida, the letter stated, has ``too many prisons needing to be built at an astounding cost.'' Too many non-violent individuals get locked up. Too many youngsters are tried in adult court. Too many ex-offenders go back to prison ``because while behind bars, they received little or no job training, mental health and substance abuse treatment and the necessary life-skills tools to legitimately re-enter civil society.''

FAMILIAR ISSUES

Old stuff, really. Corrections experts have been saying this for years. But this was signed by three former Florida attorney generals, the directors of Florida TaxWatch, the Florida Police Benevolent Association, the Florida Chamber Foundation, Associated Industries of Florida, the Florida Association of Counties. Not a bunch of bleeding-heart egg-head academics, but conservative leaders who can't stand frittering away billions on bad prison policy.

Still, finding politicians brave enough to undo get-tough policies won't be so easy.

Miami knows that too well. South Florida cities and counties have clung to ill-considered ordinances that by now have forced upwards of 80 sex offenders to live under the Julia Tuttle Causeway -- recasting Miami into a place given to medieval justice.

Newsweek, in this week's issue, became only the latest national publication to eviscerate Miami's image, describing the causeway camp as ``a squalid and dreary place. The air is thick and stifling, reeking of human feces and of cat urine from all the strays that live there . . . Makeshift dwellings sprawl out in every direction -- tents clinging to concrete pylons, rickety shacks fashioned out of plywood, a camper shell infested with cockroaches. There is no running water or sewage system; inhabitants relieve themselves in shopping bags and toss the sacks into a pile of refuse that they burn periodically.''

UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES

The Newsweek article describes how Ron Book, the lobbyist who had pushed for the Draconian residency restrictions for sex offenders, now recognizes the escalating unintended consequences.

But even Book may find that city and county commissioners who originally voted for his get-tough ordinances won't be so receptive to a softer approach.

Policitians are not easily convinced to back off the concept of getting tough, even when the policy equates to getting stupid. ..Source.. by FRED GRIMM