By C1 Staff
MIAMI — Florida’s new corrections secretary retracted statements about private prisons during a subcommittee meeting Wednesday.
Tampa Bay reports that Julie Jones originally said that private prison operators selectively pick and choose inmates by housing non-violent offenders and avoiding those with expensive substance abuse and mental health problems.
“I misspoke,” Jones said to the House Justice Appropriations Subcommittee during a presentation for her goals and priorities for the prison system. “Those low-level offenders are in private prisons by design.”
The Department of Corrections’ classification unit decides which inmates are house in which prisons, and those decisions are also governed in part by the per-diem rates that the DOC negotiates with private prisons.
Jones said she wanted to set the record straight as part of a straight-talking presentation to a panel chaired by Re. Larry Metz, Rep. Darryl Rouson, and her budget chief, Mark Tallent.