When asked to comment on Simpson’s criticism, the department provided a statement outlining some of the steps taken to address staffing shortages, such offering $1,000 hiring bonuses at severely understaffed facilities, reducing daily shift hours and consolidating work camps and annexes into main institutions. What I’m telling you is, with the current leadership, I see no signs that they’re willing to even talk about it in an intelligent way.” “I could not agree more that we need a major overhaul of the system. “The Department of Corrections needs to back up from what their positions have been the last few years and look at the real world, not through the bureaucratic lens they are currently looking at it through, and say, ‘You know what, that sounds like a very good plan,’” Simpson said. Without identifying Inch by name, Simpson excoriated the state agency’s top brass for resisting the effort to replace “old and dilapidated” facilities, which can house about 1,500 inmates on average, with modern institutions that could accommodate double the number of prisoners. We are not going to waste the taxpayers’ dollars,” Simpson said.
They’re going to have to do the right thing.
“We are not just going to write a bigger check because they think they need it. Simpson acknowledged that correctional officers need to have their salaries increased.īut the Senate president was adamant that the department should shutter a handful of prisons and use the savings - about $40 million annually per institution - to boost wages and build larger, air-conditioned prisons that are storm resistant. The request is aimed at addressing staffing problems that have prompted officials to temporarily shutter two prisons, close hundreds of prison dorms and suspend work squads throughout the state. “I think there’s a leadership crisis at the top,” Simpson, a Trilby Republican who is running for state agriculture commissioner next year, said.ĭepartment of Corrections Secretary Mark Inch is asking for $171 million during the 2022 legislative session to increase prison officers’ starting salaries from the current $33,400 a year - $16.70 per hour - to $41,600 a year, or $20 per hour. Simpson, in a phone interview Thursday with The News Service of Florida, blamed chronic staffing shortages and high turnover rates on corrections officials’ “lack of vision” and “myopia” in operating the troubled prison system. Senate President Wilton Simpson has a message for state prison leaders: Shut down institutions if you want pay raises for overworked corrections officers.
0 kommentar(er)
