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MIAMI —
Florida's Department of Corrections, the nation's third-largest
with 128 prisons and other facilities housing more than 85,000
inmates, is in the throes of a multifaceted scandal that shows
no sign of stopping.
A new interim chief appointed by Gov. Jeb Bush has been firing
wardens and probing cases of possible corruption and cronyism
among prison personnel, while state and federal agents have been
investigating reports of a prison-based steroid ring, theft of
state property and misuse of inmate labor.
Five veteran
Corrections officers have been fired for their part in a drunken
brawl that followed a banquet, or for allegedly lying about what
happened.
"The absence of integrity, the brutality displayed and unleashed
on others, and the dearth of leadership was totally
unacceptable," said interim Corrections Secretary James R.
McDonough, a war veteran and former Florida drug czar.
Last month, McDonough fired four wardens, three assistant
wardens and two regional directors, saying they did "not have my
trust and confidence to lead department personnel in the way
they deserve to be led."
Then, state Atty. Gen. Charlie Crist said that under McDonough's
predecessor, a former minor league baseball player had been
placed in a no-show job in a prison library so he could help
prison guards win a softball tournament.
"It is disturbing that a state agency would place so much
importance on a team sport that it would stoop to committing
crimes," Crist told reporters. The ringer, Mark Guerra, has
agreed to reimburse the state $1,400 and complete 50 hours of
community service, Crist said.
For Ron McAndrew, a retired warden, the shake-up in the
department where he worked for 23 years has come none too soon.
"In the '90s, we stood on our head, did everything possible to
get rid of our 'Cool Hand Luke' image," McAndrew said. But in
recent years, he said, conditions in Florida prisons have often
come to resemble a sinister amalgam of the classic Paul Newman
movie about the brutal treatment of convicts and the juvenile
high jinks of National Lampoon's "Animal House."
"Wild and crazy things were happening," said McAndrew, who keeps
informed through e-mail contacts with hundreds of department
employees and retirees. "One warden took his prison softball
team to Las Vegas, gave them $35,000 and said: 'Have a good
time, boys. You've earned it.' "
On Feb. 10, Bush forced James V. Crosby Jr. to resign as
Corrections secretary. Crosby, a former prison guard who rose
through the ranks, had become chief in January 2003. He had
helped organize campaign rallies for Bush and was supposed to
have settled down a department roiled by the four-year tenure of
Michael W. Moore.
Bush, who as recently as last fall had praised Crosby as a "good
leader," didn't give a reason for forcing the resignation, but
the governor said, "As the details come out, it'll be clear that
it was the appropriate thing to do."
McDonough told state legislators he was examining the propriety
of two multimillion-dollar no-bid contracts awarded to a
Tallahassee company to provide inmates with prescription drugs.
He also said he had frozen more than 50 employee club funds,
opened by prison wardens, that weren't under department
oversight. The accounts might hold more than $1.5 million, he
said.
Though the funds were intended to pay for morale-boosting events
such as family picnics, McDonough said, they were used to pay
for employee softball teams, the teams' hotel bills and other
activities "only a few could partake in."
Under Crosby, a network of "good old boys" from rural
northeastern Florida — where many of the state's largest prisons
are — came to dominate the department, McAndrew said. "It was
run as a fiefdom," he said.
Sometimes, he said, wardens and other department officials
covered up for "goon squads," groups of prison guards said to
have beaten and terrorized inmates to keep them in line.
Harry K. Singletary Jr., state Corrections secretary from 1991
to 1999, said the department had been sullied by "a tragedy of
epic proportions."
"There are so many good Corrections employees and families that
deserve better and are now stigmatized by these crooks and
rascals," he said in an e-mail.
Other states would do well to follow Florida's example and look
more closely at what goes on inside their prison systems, said
Alexander Busansky, executive director of the privately funded
Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons.
To have an effective prison system, Busansky said, "you need to
recruit the best people, give them the tools they need and hold
them accountable."
He added: "In Florida, you had a breakdown of all of the
elements you need to run any successful business or agency."
The commission has held hearings in several U.S. cities on
violence, rape and other abuse in America's prisons and jails.
Last April, McAndrew told the panel that as outgoing warden at
Florida State Prison, he had warned his successor, Crosby, that
a goon squad was giving "chronic" beatings to inmates. Instead
of disciplining one suspected squad member, McAndrew said,
Crosby promoted him.
The guard was later charged and acquitted with two colleagues in
the fatal 1999 beating of death row inmate Frank Valdes, who was
removed from his cell with 22 broken ribs and other and internal
injuries.
Randall Berg, executive director of the Florida Justice
Institute, a not-for-profit public interest law firm, said that
prison visits, letters from inmates and official records
obtained in lawsuits indicated that under Crosby, treatment of
inmates in Florida prisons became more brutal. Berg said pepper
spray had been used on prisoners confined to their cells.
"It might be purely to punish them for talking to an inmate in
an adjoining cell," he said, "or looking out the window." |
