Report finds prison monitor too lax

By SHELBY OPPEL

© St. Petersburg Times, published January 6, 2001

TALLAHASSEE -- A public agency set up to monitor the state's five privately run prisons isn't doing the job and should be abolished, according to the Florida Corrections Commission.

The prisons house about 4,000 inmates in South Bay, Lake City, Panama City, Moore Haven and Gadsden County. State law requires an on-site monitor at each, but since 1998, that position has been vacant for months at a time at three facilities, according to the commission's 2000 annual report.

As a result, the facilities have submitted incomplete reports or none at all. Such laxity should prompt lawmakers to abolish the state Correctional Privatization Commission and transfer its duties to the state Department of Corrections, the report says.

The Florida Corrections Commission, which wrote the report, was created by the Legislature to help set policy for the entire state correctional system. It says abolishing the Correctional Privatization Commission, another body created by state lawmakers, would save taxpayers about $1-million.

C. Mark Hodges, the privatization commission's executive director, said the critics are more concerned with reports than results. The corrections commission is "out of touch," he said, with Republican-led efforts to make government more efficient.

Hodges pointed to Gadsden Correctional Facility, operated by Corrections Corporation of America, which houses 896 female inmates near Tallahassee. He said the prison lacked an on-site monitor at various times because the privatization commission wasn't satisfied with the monitors it had hired, and was searching for more satisfactory replacements.

But other commission staffers were monitoring the prison, which is 20 miles away from the commission's headquarters.

And, Hodges said, since the privatization commission took over the contract from the state department of corrections, personnel vacancies at Gadsden have dropped from an average of 80 to only four or five.

"To me, that's efficient government," Hodges said.

The corrections commission report will be delivered to Gov. Jeb Bush and legislative leaders, who are not bound by its recommendations.

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