Florida’s Stand Your Ground law, sentencing reforms, and re-entry programs for inmates are just a few areas on the agenda for the Legislature’s criminal justice committees during the upcoming Legislative session.
An update on prison health care privatization was the subject of several committees this week, including a Senate Criminal Justice budget panel. Florida Department of Corrections Secretary Mike Crews says it’s been a long time coming, but the effort—expected to save the agency millions of dollars—should be finished across the state by mid-October.
“I won’t say it wasn’t without some hiccups, when you’re talking about IT issues, staffing issues—that was our main concern—that our members were treated fairly, and of course, contractually, that a large portion of our members were retained by our providers,” said Crews.
Still, he says delays due to a court battle had a negative impact on the agency’s budget. Unions sued the state on behalf of thousands of employees who did not want to lose their state jobs.
Crews says he doesn’t have a concrete number for the Legislature on his department’s deficit, but he’s still looking for other areas where the agency can save. That includes having correctional staff do their own pest control and inmates making their own clothes, instead of buying them.
Meanwhile, over in the other Chamber, Crews’ Deputy Assistant Secretary of Re-entry Chris Southerland told House Judiciary Committee members getting ID cards for newly-released inmates has been a struggle:
“Documents that you and me need right now to get an ID is a social security card, birth certificate, and two proofs of residency, and sometimes we have problems with that and we don’t have a record. So, you could just imagine we know this is an issue,” said Southerland.
The House Criminal Justice Subcommittee will also discuss sentencing reforms for those convicted of drug-related crimes and crimes against children and following up on the Timely Justice Act, a law some say speeds up the death penalty process. The panel’s chairman, Shalimar Republican Matt Gaetz says there’s a fair amount of housekeeping ahead…
“This year, we’re going to deal with the Stand Your Ground issue. We’re going to deal with reforms to violent sexual predators. There are some pre-bond issues that we’re going to address. There’s juvenile sentencing—we’ve had some Supreme Court decisions where Florida’s laws are not compliant with juvenile sentencing. So, those are just some of the items that we’ll be dealing with over the course of the year in the Criminal Justice Subcommittee," said Gaetz.
Besides the Florida Sexual Violent Predator Program, the most widely-anticipated hearing for Gaetz’ committee will be when he takes up Tallahassee Representative Alan Williams’ bill to repeal Stand Your Ground. Gaetz says he’d hoped to convene the hearing next month, but scheduling conflicts with Williams have pushed the hearing back.
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