By Steve Bousquet
Times/Herald Tallahassee Bureau
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — A year after Florida closed several prisons to save money, the state says it must reopen some of them because of projections of a growing inmate population.
The Department of Corrections wants the Legislature to appropriate $59 million to open nine shuttered facilities next year from Miami to the Panhandle, including two prisons, five work camps and two re-entry centers. The prisons, in Raiford and Polk City, were closed in July 2012 and were touted by Gov. Rick Scott as good-news, cost-cutting steps in the budget.
The new request is based on a July forecast from the state Criminal Justice Estimating Conference showing that even as the crime rate continues to drop, new admissions to the prison system are rising. They are projected to increase by 2.7 percent next year and 1.4 percent the following year, requiring more than 1,000 new prison beds.
The current inmate population is about 101,000.
Full story: Florida wants to reopen prisons to house more inmates