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Former prison chief sentenced to 8 years

By Lucy Morgan, Times Senior Correspondent
Published April 24, 2007

ADVERTISEMENT [AP photo] James Crosby, center, the former head of Florida's prison system, leaves the United States Courthouse in Jacksonville, Fla., with his lawyers, Steve Andrews, right, and David Moye, on Tuesday, April 24, 2007. Crosby apologized for his actions Tuesday moments before a federal judge sentenced him to eight years in prison for taking thousands of dollars in kickbacks from a prison contractor.

JACKSONVILLE - The former head of the state Department of Corrections, who admitted that he accepted tens of thousands of dollars in kickbacks from a prison contractor, was sentenced to eight years in prison Tuesday.

James Crosby was given 30 days to report to federal prison to begin serving his sentence.

Prosecutors had agreed to a sentence of no more than 57 months, but U.S. District Judge Virginia Hernandez Covington said Crosby deserved a longer sentence because he violated a position of trust.

At sentencing, Crosby apologized to the people of Florida, to Department of Corrections employees and to the current DOC chief, James McDonough, who was appointed to replace Crosby after he resigned in February 2006.

McDonough was the only witness the government called to testify at the sentencing Tuesday.

He told the judge how corrupt the department he inherited had become, with undisciplined employees who took the law into their own hands.

"Corruption had become a cancer on the department," McDonough told the judge. "My office was a crime scene taped off, an indication we had serious problems."

Crosby, 54, and Allen Clark, 40, a former regional director for prisons in North Florida, were charged together last year with accepting more than $130,000 in kickbacks between October 2003 and February 2006.

Clark is scheduled to be sentenced Wednesday.

Crosby started as a guard in the prison system in 1975 and worked his way to the top, using his considerable political skills to curry favor with state officials and the Police Benevolent Association, the union that represents corrections officers. As he worked his way to the top, he became close friends with lobbyists and the prison vendors who hire them.

The government said Clark accepted kickbacks from American Institutional Services, a Gainesville company that supplied the prison commissary, and that Clark would share the kickbacks with Crosby. The kickbacks totaled up to $12,000 a month.

[Last modified April 24, 2007, 16:54:46]