By Dan Sweeney
Sun Sentinel
FORT LAUDERDALE — A Fort Lauderdale transitional facility for inmates about to re-enter society is closing next week, and the battle of where they will go is just starting.
Broward Bridge, a 172-bed prisoner re-entry program that included work release and substance abuse counseling, is closing to make room for more probation offices.
Next week, the Department of Corrections will begin paying Bridges of America, the nonprofit that runs both places, for inmates it houses in Pompano and those who were transferred elsewhere.
According to Corrections spokesman McKinley Lewis, all of the prisoners from the Lauderdale facility were transferred to other substance-abuse and work-release programs in the state.
“None of them were thrown back in the general population without any regard for the program they were in,” Lewis said.
Inmates with six months to two years left in their sentences can be transferred to one of Bridges of America’s 10 facilities in the state and receive treatment for substance abuse while getting on-the-job training.
Bridges of America plans to expand its Pompano Beach facility but will have 122 fewer beds, according to CEO Lori Costantino-Brown. The Department of Corrections says it is a loss of 61 beds.
“These are fully funded beds, they’re full, and these centers perform excellently,” Costantino-Brown said.
“We feel that the end number of work-release beds, 88, is sufficient for the needs of Broward County,” Lewis said.
Bridges of America’s Broward substance abuse and work release programs have a graduation rate of almost 90 percent, and a recidivism rate of 10 percent.
Costantino-Brown said she hopes that the controversy over the Broward Bridge closure will help the programs in the future.
“My hope is that by bringing this thing to the public consciousness and the Legislature … they will value and include these programs as part of their solution moving forward,” Costantino-Brown said.
Several state lawmakers have already expressed their displeasure at Corrections’ sudden closure of the facility.
Last week, state Sen. Greg Evers, R-Baker, who runs the Senate Criminal Justice Subcommittee, said he was lied to by Corrections Secretary Julie Jones when he asked for assurances that re-entry programs would not be unilaterally shut down. And House Majority Leader Dana Young, R-Tampa, wrote in a letter to Jones the week before that “The very abrupt change-of-course on the Broward facility seems rushed and not well thought out.”
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