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Credit: via Shutterstock<\/p>\nCredit: via Shutterstock<\/p>\n
Sounding as desperate as he ever has since being appointed four years ago, Florida Department of Corrections (FDC) Secretary Ricky Dixon asked a panel of state lawmakers Wednesday for more than $512 million for next fiscal year to maintain the prison system.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a staggering amount of money that we\u2019re asking for. I\u2019m aware of that,\u201d Dixon told the Senate Appropriations Committee on Criminal and Civil Justice. Adding to the scale of the needs, he said that amount did not include funding for salaries of correction officers, which he said rank among the lowest for its size in the country.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I continue to do this job, we\u2019re going to have to have the support we need, because we cannot keep going in the direction we\u2019re going in,\u201d he added for emphasis.<\/p>\n
Florida houses more than 89,000 inmates in its corrections system, a population that has increased by more than 10,000 since 2021. That is expected to rise by another 4,100 over the next three years.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are managing today with relatively the same number of staff we had 10,000 inmates ago, so you can imagine what that\u2019s doing to the staff and inmate ratios,\u201d Dixon said.<\/p>\n
The system includes officers as young as 19 with fewer than two weeks\u2019 experience supervising more than 150 inmates in some correction facilities. That\u2019s compared to ratios of one officer to 35 or one officer to 50 inmates in other states, he added.<\/p>\n
Starting salaries for Florida correction officers begin at $22 an hour,\u00a0an annual salary<\/a>\u00a0of $45,760. That pales in comparison to nearby Alabama, where legislators two years ago\u00a0raised the minimum annual salary<\/a>\u00a0for correction officer trainees to more than $55,000 at a maximum secure facility (and Dixon said it actually went as high as $73,000).<\/p>\n Funding issues aren\u2019t new<\/p>\n The numbers Dixon cited should have surprised none of the lawmakers on the committee. Many of them served in the Senate a few years ago when\u00a0a study<\/a>\u00a0by the consulting firm KPMG recommended the state immediately appropriate more than $2 billion for immediate repairs and to develop a strategy to modernize the system.<\/p>\n The report added that the full costs of modernizing the state\u2019s prison system would range between $6 billion and nearly $12 billion.<\/p>\n Among some of the specific requests by Dixon is $155 million in operational needs; $60 million in inmate health services; $56.4 million in new housing units; $45 million in drug costs; and $22 million in critical security equipment.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat this does not include is the pay,\u201d Dixon said, adding that he hopes to \u201cremain competitive\u201d on salaries.<\/p>\n Overtime costs piling up<\/p>\n Reviewing state records showing that the Department of Corrections spent $150 million on overtime last year, Sen. Clay Yarborough, R-Jacksonville, asked Dixon why the state was paying \u201csuch a vast amount.\u201d<\/p>\n Dixon cited the addition of approximately 10,000 inmates in recent years.<\/p>\n \u201cThey have to live somewhere,\u201d he said. \u201cWe have to reopen the dorms that we\u2019re previously closed. We don\u2019t have staffing for those dorms, so we have to pull staffing from one shift to the next and it requires a lot of double shifts to man those dorms. So, that drives that overtime rate up.\u201d<\/p>\n While this Senate committee is focused on funding, not policies, Sen. Rosalind Osgood, D-Fort Lauderdale, mused to Dixon about reducing the state\u2019s inmate population by allowing some elderly prisoners to be released. \u201cGeriatric parole\u201d is legislatively authorized in 24 states around the country, according to the\u00a0National Conference of State Legislatures<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIf I had been in jail 20 to 25 years and I haven\u2019t killed a bunch of people [or] did something horrific, maybe I was just high chasing drugs \u2014 I don\u2019t know \u2014 but we gotta begin to look at adding some measure of grace for people who we can be comfortable with that they paid a consequence and maybe looking to spend money to transition them back into society in a more cost effective way,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cI stay in my lane when it comes to who should be in our system and who shouldn\u2019t be,\u201d Dixon replied. \u201cThat\u2019s worthy of debate and certainly is debated and should continue to be debated.\u201d<\/p>\n Those debates haven\u2019t taken place in the Florida Legislature, however. One\u00a0specific measure<\/a>\u00a0that would have allowed certain long-time prison sentences to become parole-eligible under certain circumstances introduced in the 2025 legislative session never received a hearing in any committee.<\/p>\n Related Stories<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \n\t\t\t\t\t\u2018If you\u2019re feeling a little d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu today it\u2019s because you should be feeling a little d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu. We heard this exact bill in this committee\u2019\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t![\"Florida](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/HousePhotoOriginal8245.jpeg\")
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