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STEVE BOUSQUETHe points instead to sentencing guidelines. About 40 percent of new drug prisoners came from Hillsborough.
TALLAHASSEE - Gov. Jeb Bush went on the offensive Tuesday to portray the recent surge in drug-related prisoners as the result of harsher sentences in a few counties, notably Hillsborough.
Seeking to shift the public focus on recent cuts in drug treatment programs, Bush said the system used to project growth in the prison population "may be an inadequate forecasting tool."
The governor asked Supreme Court Chief Justice Harry Lee Anstead, Senate President Jim King and House Speaker Johnnie Byrd to help form a group to "recommend a more effective forecasting method."
In a letter to all three officials, Bush said cutbacks in drug treatment programs, which many Democrats criticized, are "too recent" to have triggered the uptick in prisoners. He added, however, that "this may become a future factor."
The Legislature last week agreed to give the Department of Corrections $66-million more to add thousands of prison beds and gave Corrections Secretary James Crosby the power to hire contractors without competitive bidding, to save time.
Neither Bush nor Crosby has been able to explain the surge, which exceeded the projections of the Criminal Justice Estimating Conference.
The spike from March through June came while violent crime in Florida is at a 30-year low.
Crosby and Bush's drug policy coordinator, James McDonough, in a hastily arranged conference call with reporters, characterized the surge as an anomaly.
"I'm reasonably satisfied that there was no impact on the lack of (drug) treatment in prison having an impact on crimes in the street until the summer of 2002," McDonough told reporters. "The better explanation is the variations in the criminal justice system - the different habits of prosecutors and judges."
The state also released figures showing that the prison system will spend $25-million next year on community-based substance abuse programs, the lowest amount in any year since Bush took office. Bush said the Legislature appropriated less money for drug treatment than he recommended.
"That's an anomaly. That doesn't happen," Crosby said.
Hillsborough accounted for 390 of the nearly 1,000 new drug admissions to the prison system between June 2002 and June 2003.
Hillsborough State Attorney Mark Ober said he has not studied the reasons for the increase. Ober said it might be the result of mandatory minimum sentencing laws and the county's population.
"We've got over a million people in Hillsborough County, and we have growing pains," Ober said. "The more people you have, the more crime that's going to be committed."
Hillsborough Circuit Judge J. Rogers Padgett said mandatory minimum laws can land first-time offenders in prison if, for instance, they are caught possessing enough drugs to warrant a trafficking charge.
"Our hands are tied in a lot of these drug cases," Padgett said. "Next time they do the numbers, some other big (counties) will probably have the most."
Bush made reducing drug abuse a priority when he was elected in 1998. He has held drug summits to focus on the problem, and First Lady Columba Bush made it her signature issue. Their daughter Noelle was released from an Orlando drug treatment program two weeks ago after completing a treatment program after her arrest 18 months ago on a charge of trying to pass a phony prescription.
Critics, including members of the black caucus in the state House, criticized Bush for increasing the prison budget while many educators complained of insufficient resources.
"Our focus should be more on limiting the need for new beds," said Rep. Ed Jennings, D-Gainesville, chairman of the Florida Conference of Black State Legislators. "Drug intervention programs are successful. We should be investing more money in that."
- Times staff writer Christopher Goffard contributed to this report.