The Florida Department of Correction’s (DOC) unexpected announcement that it will slash contracts for substance abuse and mental health re-entry services by more than 40 percent has spurred demands that Gov. Rick Scott and legislators take action to prevent the cuts from being implemented on July 1.

Among suggested options: A special session, using state reserve funds, negotiating a truncated contract with the DOC’s healthcare provider and convening a joint legislative commission authorized to make between-session budget decisions.

DOC Secretary Julie Jones has formally submitted a request to Scott and legislative leaders to trim $29.6 million in contracts with 33 mental health and substance abuse treatment centers that provide transition services to inmates at the end of their sentences and after release.

Jones said the cuts are necessary because the DOC’s $2.4 billion fiscal year 2019 budget allocated $437 million for prison healthcare, about $55 million less than what the department maintains it needs to ensure its 97,000 inmates’ “constitutional rights are upheld while incarcerated.”

The DOC’s prison healthcare contract with Centurion of Florida LLC expires on June 30. Centurion is the only medical vendor that bid on the DOC’s FY 2019 contract, according to the department.

In negotiating a new 12-month agreement with Centurion, Jones said in a May 1 statement that pharmaceutical prices have added $28 million more to Centurion’s contract than what DOC was budgeted.

“To secure a health services contractor, fund the increased pharmaceutical budget, and adjust for reductions, we’ve unfortunately had to make some very difficult decisions,” Jones said. “At the start of the next fiscal year, we will be reducing some of our current contracts with community providers.”

In addition to cutting re-entry and post-release mental health and substance abuse programs, the DOC is also eliminating $20 million from its operations budget.

“It is our hope that these decisions, while necessary given the circumstances, are temporary and a positive working partnership with our community partners can continue in the future,” Jones said.

Costly Repercussions

If the cuts are implemented, 66 contracts held by 33 community providers, ranging from $38,000 to more than $3 million, will be cut or eliminated on July 1, according to the DOC.

This will produce a domino effect of compounded repercussions, maintains the Florida Campaign for Criminal Justice Reform, a nonpartisan coalition that includes, among others, the Southern Poverty Law Center, ACLU of Florida, Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops, League of Women Voters, Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and Florida Council of Churches.

For example, more than 1,000 inmates will be released without transition programming within the first few months on the fiscal year. And with programs for incarcerated inmates reduced by 48 percent, more inmates will be released without receiving substance-abuse treatment.

Up to 600 employees, including counselors, treatment specialists, psychologists and cafeteria workers, could lose their jobs.

Advocates maintain the cuts undermine the state’s $50 million effort to combat the opioid crisis. Senate Criminal and Civil Justice Appropriations Committee Chairman Sen. Jeff Brandes, R-St. Petersburg, said mental health and substance abuse re-entry programs reduce recidivism.

“These are the very programs that have been proven to work. You can’t have an opioid crisis and cut opioid funding,” Brandes said during a May 9 Criminal Justice Symposium in St. Petersburg. “You can’t just let people out of prison without some type of transition back into society.”

‘Foreseeable’ crisis

Advocates maintain the DOC’s budget has incurred more than $80 million in accrued budget reductions over the last three years, essentially creating a crisis that could have been avoided.

“This was a completely foreseeable problem,” ACLU of Florida Criminal Justice Reform Manager Raymer Maguire said Thursday. “Cutting these programs will result in an increase in crime, increased incarceration, increased costs.”

“This failure was compounded by [legislators’] failure to fully fund the needs of the Florida Department of Corrections” for years, said Luke Newman of the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

“All Floridians, offenders and non-offenders alike, are now placed at a greater risk as the department has chosen a plan to release inmates who have endured incarceration without receiving the mental health or drug treatment services they need,” Newman said.

Shalini Goel Agarwal, managing attorney for the Southern Poverty’s Florida office, said Thursday she has filed a public records request to review the information Jones based her decision on to determine “whether this was, indeed, the best way to go and if there are alternatives.”

Of particular interest, she said, are emails related to the cuts and copies of cost analysis reports that will clarify “what the ultimate costs are and if public safety will be compromised.”

“We are curious if there was consideration about how these cuts will ultimately result in substantially higher costs to the DOC in next year’s budget and in the budget five years down the road,” Maguire said. “We want to know: Did you consider the implications of cutting programs that help individuals stay out of prison?”

Agarwal and Maguire maintain that even if re-entry programs cannot be fully funded this fiscal year, there are better ways for the DOC to save money.

“One of the drivers of the burgeoning prison population and the costs associated with incarceration is half the [DOC’s] medical costs are incurred by prisoners over the age of 50,” Agarwal said. “This population actually has very low rates of recidivism yet we are incarcerating an increasing number of older and frailer individuals.”

Maguire said the state has a compassionate release program for prisoners in the last year of life.

“These are prisoners in wheelchairs, who are blind, who have Alzheimer’s and don’t even know they’re in prison,” he said. “They pose no risk to society” but impose substantial costs because they require special accommodations.

He cited a recent poll by Right On Crime, a conservative group, that found 60 percent of Floridians support compassionate release.

“There is bipartisan agreement on this,” Agarwal said.

Four Possible Solutions

The Florida Campaign for Criminal Justice Reform on May 9 called for Gov. Scott to convene a special session to address the cuts.

There appears to be little momentum to do so.

“We have not received any feedback from the governor’s office,” Agarwal said. “Their position is he asked for funding and it was not provided by the Legislature. We think it is incumbent on him [to respond]. This requires immediate action on his end. Cutting this program will undermine our safety.”

Scott, who is campaigning for the U.S. Senate, recommended a $169 million increase for DOC this year, which included appropriations for the re-entry services now being cut.

Maguire said Scott could “tap into the rainy day fund” to shift money from the state’s reserve into the DOC budget. Florida lawmakers have traditionally been reluctant to spend reserves.

Brandes suggests the DOC could negotiate a 10-month contract with Centurion rather than a full year agreement, giving the Joint Legislative Budget Commission an opportunity to fund re-entry services when it meets in November.

Others say the panel should convene before July 1.

House Speaker Richard Corcoran, R-Land O’ Lakes, seemed to endorse that approach during a May 9 press conference.

“It’s got to be fixed and it will be fixed,” he said.

But Senate Appropriations Chairman Rob Bradley, a member of the commission, said the next day that was unlikely and the DOC would have to live within its budget until legislators meet in 2019.