By Romy Ellenbogen
Tampa Bay Times
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — More than two years after being deployed amid a major staffing crisis, the National Guard is set to leave Florida prisons after this month.
Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2022 announced a plan to use the National Guard to help the understaffed state prisons, which were short more than 5,000 correctional officers. To fill the gap, the Department of Corrections was shelling out millions of dollars in overtime pay.
DeSantis reauthorized his order putting the Guard in state prisons four times. The latest order and authorized funding for the Guard will end this month, meaning about 400 Guard members authorized to staff correctional facilities will soon leave. Already, Florida prisons have been winding down the number of National Guard members they’ve been using.
The head of Florida’s prison system, Department of Corrections Secretary Ricky Dixon, has said the state is in a better position than it was when the National Guard had to enter.
In a presentation to lawmakers earlier this year, he said pay increases have helped with hiring and there are now around 1,000 vacancies.
But he has warned that the system is still at a “fork in the road.”
“We can decide if we’re going to go back in the hole we just came out of, or if we’re going to take the action necessary to go ahead with our current trajectory,” Dixon said to lawmakers earlier this year.
Florida’s inmate population has grown and is expected to continue to grow, Dixon said.
Already, the state has had to open new wings of Florida prisons without the full-time staff to man them, Dixon said, forcing staff to pull overtime. And more than half of full-time corrections officers have less than two years of experience.
“The inmates have much more experience than they do,” Dixon said.
A spokesperson for the Department of Corrections said in a statement earlier in May that the prison system appreciates DeSantis deploying the National Guard to help the department “maintain operations at critical institutions during a challenging time.”
Starting pay has increased by more than $15,000 in the last four years, the spokesperson said, and prisons that have trouble hiring have an additional $5,000 salary incentive.
National Guard members were concentrated primarily in facilities in the north and in the Panhandle, where vacancy rates have been disproportionately high.
To fill necessary shifts in those facilities, the Florida Department of Corrections has at times sent employees from the southern part of the state up north, paying for their travel and lodging.
Jim Baiardi, the head of the state corrections section of the Florida Police Benevolent Association, said if the Guard hadn’t stepped in, he’s not sure how much longer some of the hamstrung northern facilities could have held on.
If Florida prisons find themselves at a crisis point again after the Guard leaves, Baiardi said he thinks DeSantis would again offer help.
“I think that the governor will not allow something to happen that would jeopardize the officer or the inmate safety,” Baiardi said.
Denise Rock, the director of the inmate advocacy group Florida Cares, said she doesn’t think the Guard leaving will impact safety.
But Rock said to help with the staffing burden, she thinks there’s a simple solution: release the sick, release the elderly and release nonviolent inmates.
“It would be the most logical thing to do,” she said.
Florida lawmakers, who listened to Dixon’s presentations this year, said they think the system is prepared for the Guard’s departure. Rep. Patt Maney, R-Shalimar, said based on his conversations with Dixon, the prison secretary is “fully confident they have the staffing they need to go forward.”
“Obviously, with expected growth of inmate population and other things, they’re going to be needing more people later, but at this point they’re satisfied,” he said.
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