More than 700 air-conditioned prison beds remained empty at a North Florida corrections facility as inmates across the state endured brutal heat waves in cells without air conditioning.
Secretary Ricky Dixon, who oversees state prisons, told lawmakers that the state is suffering a staffing “crisis” that’s resulted in the “compression” of inmates from northern to more southern prisons, where there are more corrections officers. That pattern has resulted in years of nonuse of at least 740 air-conditioned beds at a Franklin County facility in North Florida.
Dixon highlighted the prison briefly as he spoke to a panel of lawmakers who are contemplating solutions to address the perennial heat problems endured by Florida inmates who don’t have climate-controlled cells. Florida Politics confirmed with the Department of Corrections that five dorms in the prison have been shuttered for at least two years and were not used during last summer, which featured heat that fetched national coverage.
“It was a hot summer and we won’t deny that,” Dixon later told lawmakers, adding that the majority of prisons do not have air conditioning.
The Franklin prison, located about an hour southwest of Tallahassee, was among 15 facilities lawmakers recently authorized to offer $5,000 hiring and retention bonuses. That funding was part of a number of changes made last Session to address the staffing crisis at Florida prisons, including raising starting pay for officers to $22 per hour and changing the retention pay scheme.
There are four different regions classifying the prison system. The northern two have vacancy rates — caused by labor supply issues — of more than 20%. A more-central region has about a 6% vacancy rate and the southernmost region has a 14% vacancy rate.
Most of the bonuses went to corrections facilities in the northern part of the state suffering staffing crises.
“(The shortage) is causing us to move inmates from the north into the south and compress them in unacceptable levels in the southern prisons,” Dixon said.
And as he acknowledged earlier, it’s exacerbating the air conditioning problems facing inmates. As Dixon noted, heat can also create unsafe conditions for prison staff, too.
“I will be candid, I desire (air conditioning) most of all for our staff,” Dixon said. “But when I say I’m concerned for staff that’s not to take away from the (prison) population.”
Some prison temperatures may have exceeded 115 degrees during the summer.
The heat problem is so bad that Fleming Island Republican Sen. Jennifer Bradley feared that the lack of “heat mitigation” might get Florida into legal trouble.
If lawmakers don’t address it, “Florida will find itself on the receiving end of a lawsuit and that will be a lot more expensive,” said Bradley, who chairs the budget committee for criminal justice issues.
More than 85,000 inmates are currently incarcerated in Florida prisons.
Without funding to update and overhaul the prisons, the Department of Corrections has engaged in what it calls “heat mitigation,” Dixon said.
Such efforts include installation of fans and misting devices and finding other ways to ventilate prisons.
“I’m not saying these are acceptable long-term solutions,” Dixon said.
Democratic Sen. Jason Pizzo suggested more state figureheads need to walk through and observe conditions at Florida prisons because the state is “doing a horrible job in terms of resources.”
“We’re spending over $3 billion a year out of the state budget and nobody (in the Cabinet) has visited a prison in the last six years,” Pizzo said.
While the Cabinet is solidly Republican today, Pizzo suggested the lack of prison involvement isn’t partisan.
“I don’t recall the Democratic Agriculture Commissioner visiting either,” Pizzo said of Nikki Fried, who served in the Cabinet until 2023 and now chairs the Florida Democratic Party.
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