CORRECTIONS' SKEWED PRIORITIES

The budget priorities of the Florida Department of Corrections can't
get much more shortsighted or skewed. Just weeks after a special
session of the Legislature approved an emergency authorization of
$66-million to add 4,000 new prison beds, the department has announced
deep cuts in court-ordered drug treatment programs statewide. A more
backward approach to criminal justice could hardly be fashioned.

Nonprofit drug treatment providers around the state were notified late
last week of $7-million in budget cuts they would collectively have to
bear. For Operation PAR, the largest drug treatment provider in
Pinellas and Pasco counties, that means a cut of 60 beds from its
195-bed inpatient facility and the elimination of most of its
outpatient services. Similar cuts are being made by service providers
around the state.

Already male offenders, approved for residential treatment, have to
wait on average four to five months in local jails for a treatment bed
to open up. With the cuts, beds will be even scarcer. It appears that
drug courts - one of the most successful criminal justice experiments
in the state - will soon have no place to send people. Nonviolent
offenders will end up in prison or back on the streets with their
addiction intact.

Is it really necessary to have to educate Tallahassee on the value of
drug treatment programs? While Gov. Jeb Bush has been a vocal
proponent of drug courts and treatment, he has not invested the
political capital necessary to ensure that his suggested budgetary
outlays for these programs get through the Legislature. Only last
month Noelle Bush, the daughter of the governor, completed
court-ordered drug treatment as an alternative to incarceration. A
drug court in Orlando sentenced her after her arrest last year for
trying to obtain the antianxiety drug Xanax with a forged
prescription. At the time of Noelle's graduation from the program,
Gov. Bush issued a statement that he and his wife were "grateful for
the treatment she's received."

But even as he was making those statments, the Corrections Department
was determining how many others would be denied those services. The
budget cuts are retroactive to July 1, the beginning of the state's
fiscal year. Oddly, the department just got around to telling service
providers the bad news.

Thanks to the delay, drug treatment facilities will have to make even
deeper reductions in staff and services than they would have had they
been informed in a timely manner. The delay also meant the provider
community had no opportunity to lobby for part of that $66-million the
department secured for prison building during last month's special
session. The department said the emergency funds were necessary due to
an unexpected spike in the prison population - attributable in great
part to drug offenses.

The governor has a duty to set this right. Those prison-building funds
won't be expended in a single year. In the meantime, some of that
money should be redirected to drug treatment. The governor should make
clear to Corrections Secretary James Crosby that the department's
funding priorities need revising and to be quick about it.