FEWER ADDICTS, LESS CRIME

The savings state legislators are seeking from cuts to the Florida
Department of Corrections budget are not worth the threats to public safety
they would produce.

The Florida Parole Commission has proposed more than $362 million in
savings by allowing some chronically ill and nonviolent offenders to get
out of prison early, allowing some youthful offenders to be paroled and
cutting prison terms for offenders under supervision as they recover from
addiction. In addition, Sen. Victor Crist, R-Tampa, chairman of the
Criminal and Civil Justice Appropriations Committee, asked Corrections
Secretary Walter McNeil to cut 10 percent of his budget - nearly $215
million. Among the harmful potential cuts: ending substance-abuse treatment
for prisoners ($26 million) and ending transitional release programs that
help inmates reenter society.

Florida already has too many ex-offenders re-offending; 43 percent of
prisoners were incarcerated before or had violated their probation. As a
2006 task force that examined the re-offender problem concluded, cutting
money for drug courts, pretrial intervention and other effective programs
that steer addicts to rehabilitation only will result in more repeat
offenders. Sixty-five percent of the state's inmates and 57 percent of the
offenders on probation have drug problems.

Said Mr. McNeil: "It's the same people coming back into our system over and
over again. If we don't do something different, we're never going to get
anything different." He urged legislators to support Gov. Crist's budget
proposal, which would fully finance substance-abuse treatment over the next
five years, diverting 7,000 from prison, and reducing the need for 2,900
new prison beds.

The proposed short-term cost savings to the state would force a long-term
cost dump onto counties, which would need more probation officers, more
community-based supervision programs and more local drug- and alcohol-abuse
treatment, as the state orders the counties to cut their budgets. For a
long-term reduction in the number of prison beds, Florida must consider
who's being sent to prison in the first place, and why.