Amid COVID-19, Florida confronts age-old question: Do the old and sick need to be locked up?
On the day the Florida Legislature voted on the budget, Florida had 390 positive cases of COVID-19 and eight deaths statewide.
Rep. Dianne Hart, D-Tampa, a leader on prison issues, made a point before the vote to ask what was being done to address a potential outbreak of the virus in the state prison system. Inmates can’t even have hand sanitizer, she said, and lawmakers can no longer visit to keep tabs on what is happening inside.
“We know that one outbreak in our prison system is going to devastate the inmates we have,” she said. “We have thousands of people over 60 housed in our facilities.”
She was ignored.
I follow a few people in Florida on the prison reform side of things. Rep. Hart is a champion. Tomoka ci went from 7 to 38 now 50 some in like 4 days. It’s a time bomb in prison.
It does not surprise me that she was ignored. After all, prisoners cannot vote therefore they are of no human value to most politicians.
Received an email from a friend at Tomoka CI saying 62 inmates had been evacuated to Columbia CI. They were the only ones from Tomoka who were NOT affected by covid-19! OMG!
Good Day
I have received numerous emails from Florida Inmates via JPay email that they can access….The amounts of lock downs that are occurring are ENORMOUS….There is No Sanitizer and Bleach as anyone who has been in the system inmates always had to pay the laundry guys and sanitation workers to get bleach…Now a water bottle size of bleach is going for ’20 Soups’……Again, there is NO real quarantine as there is NO testing for the 100K plus Florida inmates….Social Distantly in Prison only Exists in Solitary Confinement…..
All our hands are Tied….We cannot do a thing…it is very frustrating….
Please pray for these inmates!
That, of course, is all Ron Book’s doing. This sick individual is projecting his own guilt for allowing his own daughter’s molestation for such a long period.(now a Florida state Senator-Ever wonder how THAT might happened?) onto every poor soul who was curious about, or in love with someone past puberty, but underage and is suffering beyond measure because of it. If Ron Book had his way, he’d crucify in public everyone ever convicted of any type of natural sexual behavior. The laws make no distinction among the universe of offenses the ignorant and stupid call crimes-SOME of which are, of course, but the culpabilities of these offenses vary greatly, but the punishment is the same for all. And that is a legislative crime that NO legislator should ever be forgiven for.
Florida foolishly got rid of its Parole system years ago. This needs to be reinstated with a priority on reviewing elderly inmates. We have people in prison that don’t even know where they are. WTF is the point in that.
Alan, since when did Florida need a ‘point’ for any of the stupidity that it exercises? The only point Florida knows about is fear, paranoia, false premise, and vote trolling. Truth be known, the politicians care little to nothing about the citizens; only about maintaining power and control. Why in the world would a state do away with parole unless it was to keep the private prisons full of ‘customers’?
Letter to SAMANTHA J. GROSS Miami Herald on 4/25/2020
Hello:
Every time inmates are released for compassionate reasons, those who have formerly committed sex crimes are excepted from our compassion.
In fact, though, those criminals who have committed sex crimes are statistically the least likely to reoffend! (As they age, their likelihood of reoffense all but disappears.) This is not widely known to the public, but has consistently been shown to be true in numerous, state, university and federal studies done of recidivism.
When we refuse to extend compassion to those prisoners who have the best chance at reform, we turn our backs on science, reason, justice and mercy. Instead, we succumb to hate and fear.
Keeping former sex offenders locked up during this global pandemic is akin to a genocide!
Good, brief letter. I hope it makes it to print.
Thank you, JJJJ, for writing this letter.
A big deal has been made about the people released from the New York City jail who have already been re-arrested. What the media is NOT saying, but the mayor of New York is saying, is that the MAJORITY of those released are NOT committing new crimes. We are becoming a country where for every one person who re-offends, many law-abiding citizens are being punished for something they did not do.