By Mary Ellen Klas
Miami Herald
MIAMI — Piper Kerman, whose memoir “Orange is the New Black” inspired the successful NetFlix series, told the Senate Democratic caucus that the recent focus on Florida’s prisons is “very deserved” because the state “struggles to operate a system which is professional, which is humane and which is safe.”
“All you need to know, as a proof point on that, is to see the shocking number of deaths coming out of the Florida system, especially in recent years,’’ she said. “Those are not deaths by natural causes, those are not deaths by another inmate, those are prisoners who are killed by Florida staff.”
Kerman, 45, pleaded guilty for money laundering and drug trafficking in 1998 and served 13 months of a 15 month sentence. Her memoir documents her time in a Connecticut women’s prison and she now dedicates her time advocating for prison reform and awareness of women in incarceration. She was invited to talk about her experience and observation to the caucus by Sen. Eleanor Sobel, D-Hollywood.
Kerman urged the senators to not to look at the stories of abuse, neglect and cover-ups in Florida prisons in isolation but as part of a deeper, systemic problem and hold them accountable. She cited the death of Latandra Ellington, a 36-year-old mother of four who died at Lowell Correctional Institution after writing a letter to her aunt that detailed threats of abuse and death by a sergeant.
Ellington was serving a 22-month sentence “for basically passing bad checks” and she was allegedly “kicked to death in an isolation cell,” she said. “I don’t know how many of you have visited a prison in your district, but I can tell you, nobody gets in an out of an isolation unit under secret, under cover of night. Staff don’t sneak into isolation units...
“So the idea that some of the things that transpired in the Florida correctional system are ‘a few bad apples’ is not true. Because someone doesn’t perpetrate that kind of crime unless they can get away with it.”
Kerman suggested that the proposal to create an independent oversight commission to investigate and monitor the Department of Corrections is “basic and simple” and could be an important change that moves Florida closer to other states that have adopted significant prison reform.
“We invest great power and authority into the folks who run our law enforcement systems,’' she said. “There has to be a check and balance on them..make sure there is someone who has the power to hold those systems accountable.”
She said that Florida, as other states have done, should improve the system to police its police.
“We invest great power and authority into the folks who run our law enforcement systems,’’ she said. “There has to be a check and balance on them..make sure there is someone who has the power to hold those systems accountable.”
Kerman said the focus must now turn to reducing the number of people in prison and she noted that both Texas and New York have reduced their prison population with no increase in violent crime.
“Anybody that thinks putting people in prison is going to make us safer needs to see that data because they are dead wrong,’’ she said. “We’ve long past the tipping point where prisons make us safer and we’ve reached a place where they are actually making us less safe.”
She urged legislators to recognize that the dollars that the state is “shoveling…into the flaming bonfire of – the flaming bonfire of the Department of Corrections in the state of Florida” and suggested the money “could be better spent in the community, addressing things like mental health and substance abuse.”
“Regardless of how you think about the people that are going into the system, we should all recognize that those dollars that we’re shoveling into the money pit – the flaming bonfire of the Department of Corrections in the state of Florida – could be better spent in the community, addressing things like mental health and substance abuse,’’ she said.
Sen. Arthenia Joyner, D-Tampa, touted the bi-partisan efforts of her members and Sen. Greg Evers, R-Baker, who are attempting to implement reform.
“Persons who are sentenced to prison are not sentenced ot death,’’ she said. “Only those on death row – not Latandra and Jordan and others.”
Kerman said the safest and most effective prisons are those that have “the greatest transparency to the outside world” and the greatest “permeability” with a system that is accessible and available to community oversight and volunteer and family connections.
“A warden or a captain or someone who suddenly decides to withhold food as a form of punishment would not be able to do that,’’ she said.
Sitting in the audience was Sen. Don Gaetz, R-Niceville, who asked her about the track record of abuse in private prisons versus the public system. Gaetz was an advocate of building a private prison in his home district.
Kerman said she considers private prisons “a big mistake.”
“Any time that we place profit at the center of a public safety decision or process, that process is going to fail and I think placing profit at the center of public safety decisions and public safety sysatems dooms them to fail. It obviously creates perverse incentives to have people in that system and the people that will be excluded on that front are the people with the least political power.”
She said there are mixed reports about the conditions in private prisons. “Many people say they are bad places to work. Of course they pay less, generally, than when we operate public institutions. We have seen some really terrible abuses in private prisons.”
She recommended the recent report on the private prison chain, Correctional Corporation of America, which has grown as the prison population has exploded in the U.S. She noted that the Geo Group “is very politically powerful in the state of Florida” and called Corizon Healthcare and food vendor Aramark “prison profiteers.”
“They really make a lot of money on prisons and that’s a very, very debatable merit,’’ she said.
Gaetz later commented that Kerman’s statements are predictable. He said he wants to get more information about the level abuse at private systems compared to public systems.
“We would all agree the abuses she catalogued are horrific,’’ he said. “The question is are those more or less likely they would occur in a public prison.”
Kerman is scheduled to appear at Florida State University Tuesday evening.