Thursday, June 13, 2002

FSP shake-up may flood jail

By KAREN VOYLES
Sun staff writer STARKE - Florida State Prison and three other state prisons soon will become home to a special group of inmates - those with mental health and behavioral problems. The change may mean more violent inmates being run through the Bradford County Jail.  

 

Florida prison officials have decided that male inmates who may benefit from mental health treatment and whose behavior is so bad they must be held in close management should be housed at FSP, Santa Rosa or Charlotte correctional institutions, while the female inmates meeting that criteria will go to Dade Correctional Institution.  

 

Close management is the prison system's term for inmates who must be housed away from the general population to protect themselves or others because of their own behavior. Many prisons are now housing close-management inmates with mental health problems.  

 

James Crosby, the former FSP warden and now regional director for institutions in Region 2, said the inmates being moved from other prisons will not be extreme psychiatric cases. "The kinds of cases that we are beginning to move into FSP are those where we think we can make some progress with those individuals through monitoring and treatment," Crosby said. "This will allow us to concentrate on the programs. We were spread too thin to be cost-effective when we were offering these programs at several institutions across the state."  

 

Sheriff concerned  

 

Crosby said not every bed at the four prisons will be used for the inmates with mental health and discipline problems. For example, FSP will designate 300 to 400 of the 900 beds in the main unit for the incoming inmates. The remaining beds will continue to be used by some Death Row inmates as well as inmates who have been behavior problems at other prisons or are serving their time at FSP because they have been classified as inmates who need close custody - the state's most secure level of imprisonment.  

 

Inmates moved out of FSP will be sent to other prisons around the state where beds become available. It's the inmates being released from those 300 to 400 beds that concerns Sheriff Bob Milner in Bradford County, where FSP is located. While state prison officials said the majority will go back to their home counties, Milner said his concern is inmates who have served their sentences and must be released even if they have new charges pending against them, such as a battery while in prison. Those inmates go directly from the state prison system to the county jail in the county where the offense allegedly happened. In the case of FSP, it's the Bradford County Jail.  

 

Milner said he did not realize the change was being made until recently when some of the officers who work full time at FSP and part time at the county jail mentioned the changes. County officials in the other three locations said they had no information about the plan to cluster the inmates, although all four prisons already have some beds allocated for those inmates.  

 

Recently, three men being released from FSP at the end of their state sentences were taken to the Bradford County Jail in Starke to await court appearances on new charges, and they gave Milner's staff a preview of what may happen in the future.  

 

Milner said his officers were tipped off by state officers that the men had the potential to become violent. Jail workers said it didn't take long to recognize they were dealing with very troubled individuals, including one who allegedly tried to throw a correctional officer off a second-floor balcony. Each of the men was held in one of the jail's eight single-inmate cells, tying them up for weeks.  

 

"It was clear these guys needed psychiatric evaluations, but those don't happen overnight," Milner said. "And they aren't free. This county has to pay for them because they are being prosecuted in this county." County must pay At $400 apiece, the evaluations can quickly add up for the rural county.  

 

"But that's not our only cost when we get this type of individual," jail administrator Lt. Randall Zipperer said. "At the state prison, they may use two or three or four officers to move an inmate, but here we may only have six on a shift, and that's for all 159 beds, so we may have to look at adding officers."  

 

Milner said there are lots of other issues, too, such as the need for more single-bed cells to keep inmates from hurting each other. "I understand what the state wants to do, but down the road, this jail is not capable of functioning as a de facto mental health facility, especially for inmates," Milner said.  

 

The lead assistant state attorney for Bradford County, Mark Moseley, said he and another attorney in his office routinely carry felony caseloads of 275 to 300, with only about 1 percent of those cases going to trial. He predicts that having a cluster of inmates at FSP with mental and behavioral problems could increase the number of cases that are tried. Moseley said when defendants realize their only option is a return trip to state prison, their cases tend to be protracted.  

 

"By their nature, those cases are going to take longer because the defendants want the full extent of discovery and every opportunity to depose witnesses," Moseley said.  

 

Further, when a jailed defendant shows some signs of mental health problems, at least two mental health evaluations must be made to confirm insanity or incompetence. Those examinations must happen before the case goes to trial, and it can take as long as a month to get a second evaluation ordered, which means another month in the county jail.  

 

State assistance  

 

To help small rural counties that house prisons deal with unexpected expenses, the state Legislature approved a supplemental distribution of state sales taxes in 1982, when the sales tax increased from 4 percent to 5 percent. "There are a handful of counties that get this supplemental distribution each year," said Christian Weiss, chief economist for the Department of Revenue Office of Tax Research and Analysis. "It varies according to the sales tax collected, but this year Bradford County would get an estimated $68,000."  

 

Milner said the amount of money the state sends to the county to compensate for housing a prison is minuscule compared with the actual costs involved for his office alone. The jail budget this year is $1.4 million to cover the costs of feeding and housing an average of about 140 inmates a day, pay salaries to the 18 full-time and 22 part-time employees and handle medical care and dental emergencies.  

 

"I can't stop FSP from becoming a mental health facility, and I'm not sure it's a bad idea," Milner said. "But for us, it will be labor-intensive and dangerous to handle the folks coming from there to here for who knows how long. The Legislature or someone is going to have to take a look at how we are going to pay for all this."  

 

Karen Voyles can be reached at (352) 486-5058 or karen.voyles@gainesvillesun.com.  

Opinions/Editorial | Post a message on the Community Forums | What is your opinion?

---

I want to say that  this is absolutely crazy to say they are going to help inmates with mental problems at FSP. Never in a million years will this  happen.  

My husband Frank J. Valdes (DOC #B072791)  was at FSP for 9 years and he only saw the shrink once a month, and  that was because it was a mandatory visit once a month for all death row inmates to see Mr Kelly - Once a Month! When Frank was acting so strange I called Mr Kelly and he says "Frank is fine." 

What mental health programs do they plan to institute??? I think they want these sick people together so they can abuse them, then if anyone says anything,  they can say "well they are crazy." 

These people all lied to me from the start to the end. Plus they all lied and covered up. We need to have our complete prison system overhauled and investigated. This is all a smoke screen to be able to say we have made changes because they  know they are being sued. I look at these people as all criminals, worse than the people they guard;  they lied, they covered up, they hide their murders and they tried to get out of it.  I just pray to god that, they are all finally held responsible.

They can put all the programs they want to in place: They can move inmates, make new policies, open and close prisons, but they will face the truth someday, and they will pay for what they did. They are  still beating and abusing inmates and covering it up.

First these cameras were suppose to make me see changes. What a laugh.  Cameras can be and are turned off when something is not right. 

I will write Ashcroft every week and keep demanding justice until we get it. All people are human beings and  they deserve to be treated as such. This state will be much better when Bush goes back to Texas and we get a democrate, someone to tell more about justice, fairness and honesty. 

Franks murder was a huge cover-up.  everyone knows it.   Crosby is a laugh. He was up at FSP trying to cover up for his ole boys. I could not in my fondest dreams or worst nightmares believe he was promoted. They cover up, lie, cheat , and murder and then want to talk about changes. Who are they kidding?  An idiot can see the truth. Watch what they do and what they did, not what they say.  Oh, they did admit Frank was murdered, but they can't figure out who did it? What a bunch of lying killers.  20 men were  wrongfully convicted of murder in FLA.  and not one guard owns responsibility for my husband's murder!

I say SEND IN THE FEDS

Wanda Valdes wife of a murdered inmate 
Wanda Valdes 

---

From: Glenn Larkin [mailto:nc15960@pol.net]
Sent: Friday, June 14, 2002 7:29 AM
To: Kay Lee
Subject: Re: DOC HERDING THE MENTALLY ILL INTO DEATH CAMP

Abraham Lincoln once said:

"You can fool all of the people some of the time, some of the people all the time, but you can't fool all of the people all the time!"

This is something for the Goons in Florida to remember and worry over. While the idea of separating the insane inmates from the rest of population may be a sound idea in honest hands, the Florida DOC is far from honest. The system is built on a basic immoral (amoral ?) concept that prisoners react to Pavlovian stimuli only, and a good beating is the means to control any prisoner who deviates from what is expected from him.

Borrowing both from the Nazis (Theodore Eike developed the Nazi approach to punishment in the first concentration camp, encouraging his guards, taken from the regular German prisons, to beat "haftlings" on every occasion), and the Soviets, who used alleged mental illness to hospitalize and treat dissidents with drugs, Florida does both rather eclectically to keep the hardass cases in check. It will not work!

---

Making The Walls Transparent
PRISON INDEX