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The Florida Department of Corrections DC is the third largest state prison system in the country with a budget of $2.3 billion, almost 94,000 inmates incarcerated and another 153,000 offenders on some type of community supervision.The DC has 137 facilities statewide, including 60 prisons, 41 workforestry camps, one treatment center, 30 work release centers and five road prisons. About three quarters of its staff of more than 27,000 employees are either certified correctional officers or probation officers. The average DC employee is 41 years old and has been with the agency for almost nine years. There was a single prison escape from a major prison last fiscal year, by an inmate who fled while being transported, but he was recaptured.Prisons are generally managed by state government, but Florida does have six privately run prisons. Florida’s jails, generally, are run by individual counties. The main difference between jails and prisons is that jail inmates may be awaiting sentencing, and prison inmates have already been convicted and sentenced. Also, jail inmates usually are sentenced to a year or less, and for a lower level crime such as a misdemeanor, whereas prison inmates usually have sentences of more than a year for more serious felony offenses.The mission of the Florida DC is to protect the public safety, to ensure the safety of Department personnel, and to provide proper care and supervision of all offenders under our jurisdiction while assisting, as appropriate, their reentry into society. To that end, the DC provides dozens of academic, vocational and substance abuse programs to inmates and offenders, including in such areas as GED, adult basic education and mandatory literacy; printing and graphics, carpentry and digital design; and Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous.In Fiscal Year 200607, about 37,000 inmates were admitted into prisons and another 35,000 were released; while more than 107,000 offenders were placed on community supervision and another 104,000 were released from supervision. Given the fact that most of those who serve time in prison and on supervision will eventually be free, the DC is focusing on equipping its inmates and offenders with the tools they will need to become productive citizens.

 

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