Florida Department of Corrections

Florida Department of Corrections
Patch of the Florida Department of Corrections.
Agency overview
Formed	1921
Legal personality	Governmental: Government agency
Jurisdictional structure
Operations jurisdiction*	State of Florida, USA
Map of Florida Department of Corrections's jurisdiction.
Size	65,795 square miles (170,410 km2)
Population	18,328,340 (2008 est.)
General nature	Law enforcement Civilian police
Operational structure
Headquarters	Tallahassee, Florida
Agency executive	Ken Tucker, Secretary
Website
Florida DOC Website
Footnotes
* Divisional agency: Division of the country, over which the agency has usual operational jurisdiction.

The Florida Department of Corrections, established in 1821, operates state prisons in Florida. It has its headquarters in Tallahassee.

The Florida Department of Corrections operates the third largest state prison system in the United States. It is the largest agency in the State of Florida, with a budget of $2.3 billion, a little over 102,000 inmates incarcerated and another 150,000+ offenders on some type of community supervision.

The Florida Department of Corrections has 146 facilities statewide, including 62 prisons, 45 work/forestry camps, one treatment center, 33 work release centers and five road prisons. It has more than 27,000 employees, about three-quarters of which are either certified correctional officers or probation officers.

History

Dade Correctional Institution/Homestead Correctional Institution

Florida's first penitentiary was opened in the U.S. arsenal property at Chattahoochee in 1868.

From 1991 to 2010, major crime rate, per capita, dropped 52%. This was not anticipated. Major crimes include homicide, rape, robbery, burglary, aggravated assault, theft, auto theft and arson. This led, in turn, to fewer new convictions and imprisonments, leading to closure of facilities. The number of new annual admissions peaked at 42,000 in 2007. It dropped to 35,000 new admissions in 2011.

Death row

Main article: Capital punishment in Florida

Florida State Prison and Union Correctional Institution each have a male death row, while Lowell Annex has the female death row. Florida State Prison houses the state's execution chamber. Unlike other prisoners, condemned prisoners wear orange T-shirts. Condemned prisoners wear the same blue trousers worn by other prisoners.

When Lowell Correctional Institution opened in 1956 as the Florida Correctional Institution, it housed the female death row. The prison now known as Florida State Prison opened in 1961 as the East Annex; at the time of opening it began to house the execution chamber. At some point the Broward Correctional Institution housed female death row inmates. Lowell Annex opened in April 2002. The female death row was moved to Lowell Annex in February 2003.

Recidivism

About one-third (32.8%) return to prison within three years of release.

Juveniles

The state houses between 250-300 inmates under the age of 17 at various state prisons during any given time, with the majority spending their time at the Indian River Correctional Institution. The budget was $240 million. This was $109 to $155 per day per offender.

Budget

It costs on average $19,469 per year to incarcerate an inmate in Florida. This includes $2.32 per day for 2,800 calorie meals.

2011 Budget Cuts

In first quarter 2011, the state of Florida announced the closing of 6 institutions in order to save up to $30 million. Three prisons, two bootcamps, and a road prison will be closed. Brevard Correctional Institution, which is a youthful offender prison, Lowell Boot Camp, a youthful offender female boot camp, Sumter Basic Training Unit, a youthful offender male boot camp, Hendry Correctional Institution, the female prison Hillsborough Correctional Institution, and Tallahassee Road Prison are the institutions that will be closed. No inmates will be released as a result of the closing, and the employees of the closing institutions will be offered jobs at other prisons. The institutions began moving inmates on April 1, 2011, and has finished as of June 30, 2011. Hillsborough Correctional Institution and Sumter BTU were not closed.

Governor Rick Scott has called for a second group of prisons to be closed. The Florida Department of Corrections stated that aside from the obvious financial reasons, another reason for the closings is because of a declining prison population. The following prisons are to be closed within the next couple of months:

• Broward Correctional Institution
• Demilly CI
• Gainesville CI
• Hillsborough CI (large amount of pleas caused closing to be postponed after the initial closings)
• Indian River CI
• Jefferson CI
• New River CI (both units)
• River Junction Work Camp
• Caryville Work Camp
• Hendry Work Camp
• Levy Forestry Camp

Headquarters

The headquarters of the agency are in the Doyle Carlton Building in downtown Tallahassee. Some offices are in the Southwood Office Complex in Tallahassee. Starting sometime after March 22, 2011, the department moved into its current headquarters and office buildings.

At one time the agency had its headquarters at 2601 Blair Stone Road in Tallahassee.

Fallen officers

Since the establishment of the Florida Department of Corrections, 24 correctional officers have died in the line of duty.

Instances of Abuse

There have been several recorded cases of corruption and prisoner abuse in the Florida Department of Corrections.

In 2010, there was a 10-count federal indictment against sixteen individuals connected with the FDC, eleven of whom were corrections officers at the Glades Correctional Institution. The charges included "nine counts of attempting to possess cocaine with intent to distribute." The indictment alleges that the defendants "allegedly agreed to transport and did in fact transport on multiple occasions what they believed to be multi-kilo quantities of cocaine from the undercover warehouses in Miami-Dade County to locations in West Palm Beach." and that the defendants allegedly received a combined total of $145,000 through the drug scheme.

In 2006, the death of Martin Anderson at a facility operated by the Bay County Sheriff's Office drew a broad outcry accusing the camp guards of racially-motivated murder, in part in response to an official videotape that showed the guards using physical coercion. The Florida legislature voted to close the state's five juvenile boot camps.

The state is facing lawsuits alleging "excessive as well as "malicious and sadistic" use of pepper spray," and "that its prisons subject too many inmates, including the mentally ill, to a prisoner 'warehousing' culture of unlawfully extreme isolation and deprivation, usually with little or no rehabilitation efforts to prevent recidivism."

In 2010, two correctional officers at the Lancaster Correctional Institution were charged with malicious battery and cruel or inhumane punishment after an inmate collapsed in the exercise yard during routine drills. An investigation discovered that the correctional officers forced the inmate to perform strenuous exercises in the sand, heat and provided no water breaks while denying his request for medical help and failed to call for emergency help after the inmate collapsed. The inmate was in critical condition, but has since recovered.

See also

• List of Florida state prisons
• List of law enforcement agencies in Florida
• Florida State Prison

External links

• Official website
  • Search for inmates