During budget negotiations Sunday night, GOP leadership tried to unsuccessfully sneak prison privatization into the state’s budget, The Palm Beach Post reports.
The American Civil Liberties Union, along with dozens of policy and religious groups, are urging Republican governors– including Florida Gov. Rick Scott– not to sell state prisons to the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), a private company currently looking to buy state prison contracts as part of a new business venture.
The Florida Senate passed its budget bill today with a bipartisan 33-6 vote.
State Sen. Mike Fasano, R-New Port Richey, has introduced an amendment to the Senate’s budget bill that he hopes will further impede the state’s effort to privatize prisons.
State Sen. Mike Fasano, R-New Port Richey, appeared on Democracy Now! yesterday to discuss the defeat of a bill that would have privatized 27 Florida prisons. The bill would have essentially created the biggest corporate prison system in the country.
A bill created to privatize 27 Florida prisons died on the state Senate floor today in a 19-21 vote.
This morning, the Huffington Post reported that a private prison company had approached 48 states — of which Florida is one — to trade cash in exchange for contracts to run state prisons.
Gov. Rick Scott, who has been mostly silent on the plan to privatize 27 prisons currently moving through the Florida Senate, told reporters he is “hopeful” the state Senate will pass its bill.
An attempt by state Sen. Mike Fasano to halt the Florida Senate’s push to privatize 27 Florida prisons failed today.
The NAACP and employees with the Department of Corrections spoke out against the Legislature’s renewed efforts to privatize state prisons during a press conference at the capitol today.
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