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| Director of Florida's Prison System Resigning |
| By Miami Herald |
| Published: 12/06/2002 |
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Florida's embattled prisons chief, excoriated for the beating death of an inmate and criticized by his own employees, even some Republican legislators, announced his resignation Wednesday as Gov. Jeb Bush looks to fashion a new administration for his second term. The news that Michael Moore is leaving the Department of Corrections without a new job came as no surprise. Moore has long been rumored to be on the outs and in 2001 was a finalist for the top job with the Texas prison system. Despite Moore's rocky tenure, the head of Bush's transition team, David Griffin -- who is also leaving Bush's administration -- said the governor never asked for Moore's resignation. ''Like me and others, he decided that it was time to do something different,'' said Griffin, Florida Lottery secretary, whose resignation Tuesday surprised even administration insiders. Moore, a Houston native who worked for Texas prisons before leaving to run the prison system in South Carolina, was one of Bush's earliest recruits. He arrived with a reputation as a hard-nosed jailer and signaled his intent to carry out his boss' commitment to getting tough on criminals from the start, changing the titles of prison superintendents to wardens. But even as Moore pledged loyalty to Bush, he came under sharp criticism, beginning with the 1999 beating death of Florida State Prison inmate Frank Valdez at the hands of prison officers. After some of the officers were acquitted, the state dropped charges against the rest. Valdez's death led to changes at the prison, including videotaping the removal of prisoners from their cells. But legislators, even Republicans loyal to Bush, accused the prisons boss of creating an unfriendly work environment for prison employees and instituting sweeping changes without legislative approval, including granting raises to office personnel while ignoring front-line employees. Moore became a familiar sight at the Capitol, repeatedly called before panels to defend his work. ''It's a very tough job, and I recognize that,'' said Sen. Alex Villalobos, a Miami Republican who oversaw criminal-justice committees in the House and the Senate. 'But Mike Moore had trouble with members of the Legislature since Day One. It really made for some rocky moments.'' Moore also came under consistent fire from prison-rights advocates who accused the old-style secretary of abandoning rehabilitation efforts to focus solely on punishment. ''I don't think he'll be remembered for making positive contributions,'' said Peter Siegel of the Miami-based Florida Justice Institute, which criticized Moore for removing typewriters and word processors from prison libraries and sued the state for allegedly causing inmates to swoon from heat exhaustion by installing metal screening on their cells. ''There's been no effort to do rehabilitation,'' Siegel said. 'Folks just leave prison, and that's it.'' But Moore in his resignation letter pointed to a ''top to bottom reorganization'' of the agency that centralized much of the decision-making in Tallahassee. |
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There is a lot of information on this website about inmates and prison guards. I didn’t realize what was going on in our prison system until I discovered this website. Similarly, I didn’t understand litigation finance until I read more from Hamilton Lindley who is a litigation finance expert based in Texas.