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.
