Talahassee – More than two years after unfolding amid a major staffing crisis, the National Guard is set to leave Florida prisons this month.
In 2022, Gov. Ron DeSantis announced plans to use the National Guard to support prisons of more than 5,000 correctional officers. To close the gap, the Department of Corrections was bombarding millions of dollars in overtime costs.
Desantis has reauthored an order to place security guards four times in state prisons. The latest orders and approved funds for security guards will end this month. That means around 400 security members approved for Staff Correctional Facility will soon be leaving. Already, Florida prisons have reduced the number of National Guard members they have used.
Corrections Director Ricky Dixon, head of Florida’s prison system, said the state is in a better position than when the National Guard had to come in.
In a presentation to lawmakers earlier this year, he said the increase in pay has helped hires and there are currently around 1,000 vacant seats.
However, he warns that the system is still on “road forks.”
“You can decide whether to return to the hole that just came out or take the necessary action to advance your current trajectory,” Dixon told lawmakers earlier this year.
The Florida prison population is growing and is expected to continue growing, Dixon said.
Already, the state had to open new wings for Florida prisons without full-time staff giving them, Dixon said it was forcing staff to work overtime. And more than half of the full-time amendment officers have less than two years of experience.
“Inmates have far more experience than they do,” Dixon said.
A Corrections spokesperson said in a statement early in May that the prison system appreciates DaSantis’s deployment of the National Guard to help “keep operations at key institutions during difficult times.”
Starting wages have increased by more than $15,000 over the past four years, the spokesman said, and that prisons struggling to hire have an additional $5,000 salary incentive.
National Guard members were mainly concentrated in the Northern facilities and the Panhandle, where vacancy rates were disproportionately high.
To fill in the changes needed at these facilities, Florida Department of Corrections sometimes paid employees from the southern and northern parts of the state for travel and accommodation.
Jim Bealdi, head of the state corrections department of Florida Police Charity Association, said he doesn’t know how long some of the Hamrust Northern facilities could hold without security guards intervening.
If Florida prisons find themselves at the point of crisis again after the guards leave, Vialdi said they think DeSantis will offer help again.
“I don’t think the governor will allow anything to happen that puts the safety of officers and inmates at risk,” Vialdi said.
Dennis Locke, director of prison advocacy group Florida Care, said he doesn’t think security guards will affect their safety.
But she thinks there’s an easy solution, saying Locke helps with staffing burdens. It releases illness, releases elderly people, and releases non-violent prisoners.
“That would be the most logical thing,” she said.
A Florida lawmaker who listened to Dixon’s presentation this year said he believes the system is being prepared for security guards to leave. R-Shalimar Rep. Patt Maney said the prison chief was “confident there is the personnel they need to move forward.”
“Obviously, with the expected growth, such as the prison population, they will need more people later, but at this point they are happy,” he said.
