Jacob Ogles
Several private prisons scored big in salary sprinkles.
The Senate and House supplemental funding lists both budgeted significant dollars to cover correctional officer pay.
Pay equity between guards at private prisons and those working directly for the Department of Corrections has been a sticking point for the House and Senate through the budget conference process.
While the Senate has pushed in talks for more funding to catch salaries up to state workers, the House ultimately jumped in and agreed to chip in as much for the job at hand. The bulk will go to three facilities.
The facilities run by The GEO Group — Blackwater River Correctional, Moore Haven Correctional and South Bay Correctional — will receive $1.6 million the Legislature for the sole purpose of raising correctional officer salaries “commensurate with salary increases for state correctional officers.”
Additionally, the chambers together gave about $479,000 for salaries at Lake City Correctional, operated by CoreCivic.
In total, that’s nearly $2.1 million just for correction officer pay at those four institutions.
The chambers also both directed individual supplements for contract extensions at three prisons, two of those run by The Geo Group. The big winner was Moore Haven, with $6.8 million directed to the Glades County institution between the two chambers.
South Bay, in Palm Beach County, receives about $3.1 million.
Lake City will get $300,000 from the Legislature.
The funding will extend contracts for each of the correctional facilities with the state, but for no longer than two years.
From there, the Department of Corrections plans to accept fresh competitive bids for all private prisons in the state system for work in the 2026-27 fiscal year.
Correction: A prior version of this story incorrectly doubled dollar amounts.
4 comments
Joe
March 4, 2024 at 10:35 pm
Straight up grift, business as usual
Peninsula SuperMax
March 5, 2024 at 1:14 am
More prisons than colleges; that’s florida.
Leonard
March 5, 2024 at 7:44 am
This is ridiculous. Private prison companies land contracts to run prison with the pitch that they can “save the state money”…they claim they can do that by running a prison more efficiently than the state…they usually do that by paying people less. But the deal is they get a certain amount of money to run the prison—and all of the expenses are their problem. If they want to pay THEIR employees more—THEY should do it..not the taxpayers. All they have to do is trim some off of the massive salaries their corporate executives make (and it’s a lot). This is no different than Walmart saying it would like to pay its cashiers more so they can compete and the state giving them money to do so. Where are the fiscal conservatives?!
Josh Green
March 5, 2024 at 10:12 am
I can’t think of more disgustingly unethical concept than a Private Prison.
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