As Florida lawmakers confront the possibility of a deep budget deficit in 2017, reforming the state's criminal sentencing laws to stem the flow of felons into an overburdened prison system is emerging as a top cost-saving option.
- Tax watch activists suggest sentencing reform
- Allows non-violent felons to avoid prison time
- Could save the state millions of dollars
Long considered politically taboo in a Capitol dominated by tough-on-crime Republicans, more lenient sentencing schemes have gained traction in recent years as a form of 'smart justice.' Allowing non-violent felons to avoid prison time, the theory goes, is more effective at preventing recidivism and carries the added benefit of saving taxpayers massive sums of money.
"You can really reduce crime, save money and really improve peoples' lives by helping to avoid that, find alternative ways, and so forth," Florida TaxWatch President and CEO Dominic Calabro said at a Thursday press conference focused on the group's latest cost-saving recommendations.
The full list of recommendations, which were produced in concert with the state's Government Efficiency Task Force, total $2 billion -- precisely the deficit state economists project will befall Florida in 2018. Some leading legislators believe the pain could begin as early as this spring.
"The budget, I think, is going to be difficult," House Speaker Richard Corcoran (R-Land O'Lakes) told reporters last month. "I think once we see the Zika effect in our sales tax revenues, my hunch is that when we hit session in March that we're going to be pretty... at best, flat-lined and at worst, we could have a deficit."
The sentencing reform proposals include allowing judges discretion to account for the impact incarceration might have on a non-violent felon's family members, particularly if he or she is the primary breadwinner. If enrollment in a community-based rehabilitation program might present a better option, a judge would be empowered to consider it. And elderly inmates who are at least 70 years old would be eligible for supervised release.
"Once they're in there, making sure that they move out as quickly as possible, get the kind of drug rehabilitation, drug treatment, so that they don't come back" is critical -- and cost-effective, Calabro said.
Since the implementation of mandatory minimum sentences in Florida beginning in the 1990s, the state's prison population has grown exponentially, reaching more than 100,000 inmates today. Suffering from delayed maintenance, overcrowded cells and a string of prisoner abuse scandals, it could well benefit from sentencing reform as a kind of pressure relief valve.
"There are some offenders that are actually going to be worse offenders by staying in prison without the rehabilitation," Calabro said. "So, we're trying to say, 'look, let's make sure that the sentence fits the crime.'"