A Billion Dollars and Growing: Why Prison Bonding is Tougher on Florida's Taxpayers Than on Crime
Over the past 15 years, the state of Florida has increasingly turned to the use of lease revenue bonds to fund the construction of new prison facilities. Little known and not well understood by taxpayers, this funding approach has saddled future generations of Floridians with over a billion dollars in debt without appreciably increasing public safety. This report explores the unprecedented growth in the prison system that triggered the use of bonding, the genesis and history of the use of bonding to finance prison construction, and what Floridians can and should do to curtail the use of prison construction bonding.
Key sections of the report include:
- An analysis of the exponential growth of Florida's prison population in the past 30 years resulting from "tough on crime" policies that have done little to increase public safety and concomitantly have created the need to build a large number of new prison facilities to accommodate that growth.
- A description of the increasing use of lease revenue bonds over the past 15 years to pay for building new prisons, and the impact of those decisions on the taxpayers of Florida.
- An analysis of why bonding is a problem that citizens should be concerned about, because:
- It denies them a voice in the decision-making process since lease revenue bonds, unlike general revenue bonds, do not require voter approval;
- it obscures the true cost of prison system growth since full construction costs are not included in the yearly budgets, but are found only in little-known government reports;
- it makes it difficult for citizens to understand the implications or to weigh the benefits of criminal justice policies enacted by the Legislature over the years;
- it has created, and will continue to create, significant long-term debt for taxpayers; and
- it allows policymakers to avoid addressing the root causes of prison growth and to sidestep financial responsibility for their policy decisions by pushing the problem into the future.
Among the findings detailed in the report:
- The total number of inmates in Florida's prisons grew from just under 20,000 in 1980 to 102,000 in 2010 – an 80 percent increase over 30 years.
- In that same period, public spending on prisons has increased from $169 million1 to about $2.4 billion.
- The exponential increase in the prison population in recent years cannot be explained by increasing crime rates, since crime rates have steadily declined in the past 20 years.
- Florida leads the nation in incarceration rates and stringency in law and sentencing, making its criminal justice system the most punitive of the 50 states as measured by more than 40 variables, such as average prison sentences, life imprisonment, and prison conditions.
- Forty-three percent of the total cost of prison construction and expansion between 2006 and 2010 was paid for by issuing lease revenue bonds.
- There is currently $721.7 million in prison bonding debt outstanding requiring future payments of approximately $1 billion when debt service and interest payments are included.
Finally, the report outlines some of the policy choices in Florida that have led to the increases in the prison population. It describes the wide range of criminal justice reforms undertaken in other states that are successfully reducing prison populations and saving significant money without endangering public safety.
It recommends:
- Florida's legislators seriously review the criminal justice policies and practices which have contributed to the growth of the prison system over the past two decades and have financially strangled the state.
- Florida join the ever-growing number of states undertaking a broad range of criminal justice policy reforms led predominantly by conservatives who understand that highly punitive and incarceration-heavy penalties even for minor, non-violent crimes are unsustainable.
- Implement a moratorium on any new bonding to build prisons until the Governor and Legislature fully disclose to the public all costs created by the use of prison bonding and give citizens a voice in determining whether they want to pay for criminal justice policies that result in the growth of the prison system without increasing public safety.
About Florida TaxWatch