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Exporting Of Inmates Proposed

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The cost of each new prison bed? $80,000, according to the Department of Corrections

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By CATHERINE DOLINSKI

cdolinski@tampatrib.com

Published: March 7, 2009

TALLAHASSEE - With the prison population rising and state coffers shrinking, Sen. Victor Crist is proposing a new cost-saver: shipping off Florida prisoners to other states.

Crist, R-Tampa, is bracing for spending cuts of as much as 15 percent to the criminal justice budget that he oversees in the state Senate.

So he is looking for savings - especially on big-ticket items such as prison construction. Florida's prison population, which averaged 98,192 last fiscal year, is up to 102,168 this year and is expected to hit 106,086 in 2009-2010.

The cost of prison construction: $80,000 a bed, according to the Department of Corrections.

Gov. Charlie Crist has already proposed spending $5.8 million next year on bonding construction of new prison space, but lawmakers are voicing concerns about the state's increasing ratio of debt service to revenue.

Sen. Crist is proposing to stem the rise of the prison population by exporting as many as 2,000 inmates without personal ties to Florida to prisons in other states.

"Either they're illegal aliens, or they're individuals from other states that have committed a serious crime in Florida that ended up getting incarcerated here, but they have no family or relatives here to come to see them in the state of Florida," he said.

Even if it costs just as much to house an inmate in another state's prison facility, that's one less prison bed the state needs to build next year, he said.

Gretl Plessinger, spokeswoman for the state Department of Corrections, said that Florida already sends prisoners to other states in isolated cases: to protect a prisoner in custody, or by a prisoner's request to be closer to family established in another state.

What Sen. Crist is proposing is substantially different, she said, since he is not proposing to trade prisoners with other states, per an existing interstate compact in which Florida and about 40 other states participate.

Sen. Crist said the idea is still in development - there's no bill for it yet - and that staff is doing research to determine whether and to what extent nearby states would be willing to take Florida prisoners. Even if public prisons beyond Florida's borders are not interested, he said, privately operated facilities have already signaled they are.

Plessinger said the Department of Corrections is not ready to evaluate the merits of Crist's plan, since the legislation has not yet been filed.

Rep. Nick Thompson, vice-chairman of the House Criminal & Civil Justice Appropriations Committee, said the proposal was news to him.

"It's certainly worth looking into," said Thompson, R-Fort Myers. "I'd want to know if this is being done in other states."

Rep. Kevin Ambler, R-Lutz, who sits with Thompson on a House criminal justice policy panel, wanted more detail as well, but described Crist's idea as "intriguing," especially since the prison system competes with the state's courts for vital funding.

"I think that the times we live in help to generate creative solutions to problems that we have," Ambler said. "There's nothing that guarantees that someone convicted of a crime in Florida has to necessarily, for example, be sitting in prison in Pensacola that we couldn't ship them 20 miles over the border to Alabama."

Reporter Catherine Dolinski can be reached at (850) 222-8382.

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