Click here to read my latest column in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.
Sources:
- $2.5 billion shortfall: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
- Scott wants to cut taxes: St. Petersburg Times
- State and local budgets: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
- Public vs. private workers: Rutgers professor Jeffrey Keefe
- States with bargaining rights: Berkeley professor Robert Reich
- Scott’s $1 bn from DOC in 7 yrs: Sunshine State News
- Growing food, competitively bidding contracts, $1.5 bn salaries/wages: PolitiFact Florida
- FL incarceration rate, crime rate: National Institute of Corrections
- Incarceration growth: Prison Policy Institute
- Drug use growth: Law Enforcement Against Prohibition
- Portugal: Cato Institute (Glenn Greenwald)
- 1% substance abuse budget: Department of Corrections
- 82% nonviolent: Nicholas D. Kristof
- 50% mental illness: Justice Policy Institute
- Racial stats: The Sentencing Project
- $2 BN, $100 MM: Harvard professor Jeffrey Miron (Criminal Justice Policy Foundation)
- Department of Juvenile Justice cuts: WINK News
- Wall Street’s profits: CBS News
No related posts.
Sending convicted drug users to treatment instead of jail is absolutely the most economic way to help cut spending for Florida. I personally believe this because of the many times I have been incarcerated. I’m a recovering alclholic. I’ve been sober now for nine years. I truly believe I would still be drinking if it weren’t for the courts sentencing me to in house rehab. I was one of the lucky ones, I believe, who got the chance. Before that I was in and out of jail for various reasons, and all of those reasons related to alcohol. Jail is like a revolving door. You go in mad, you come out madder. You have no support system when you get out, and you end up going back to your old ways. Ultimately you end up right back in jail. Without the court ordered rehab, I know I would be in jail now or dead, or worse, have killed somebody because my specialty was drinking and driving. When I read your article, Money Wasted, I was in such agreement that I had to send a reply. It is a very important subject that I could go on and on about. Alcoholism and drug addiction causes the state so much money in many ways that sending drug users to treatment is the only way to cut back and save money. For me, sobriety has changed my life completly around and any way I can give back I will do. I would love to help others. That is my way of giving back. We must stop the revolving door, and put money towards helping addiction.