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| Florida Inmates' Drug Treatments Cut |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 02/04/2002 |
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The Florida Department of Corrections has approved a $13 million budget cut that will eliminate many drug-treatment programs for inmates and reduce programs to help drug addicts outside the prison system. The cuts will eliminate in-house drug-treatment programs at all but four of Florida's 55 prisons that house inmates sentenced to more than a year behind bars, said Sterling Ivey, a spokesman for corrections. The four prisons that will continue to carry out treatment all have federal matching grants that partly fund the programs. The cuts also will reduce by 34 percent the number of beds available to treat drug addicts at 20 residential treatment programs throughout the state. For each of the past 10 years, more inmates have been admitted for drug offenses than any other charge. Last year, nearly 29 percent of those who entered Florida prisons had been convicted of drug offenses. Prison authorities are so concerned about the potential effects of the budget cuts that they asked Gov. Jeb Bush to restore $5 million of the $7.5 million for next year's budget, Ivey said. The cuts were ordered in mid-January as part of an effort to trim $1 billion from the current budget. They take effect Nov. 1. Of offenders who successfully completed a substance-abuse program outside the prison system in fiscal 1998-99, 77.5 percent remained out of prison after two years. Of the offenders who completed drug treatment programs in locked facilities, 70.5 percent stayed out of prison, according to the corrections' department's recently released annual report. Before the cuts, $41 million of the agency's $1.3 billion annual budget was spent on treating drug and alcohol problems. After the cuts, only informal efforts such as Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous will remain in 51 of the state's major prisons. |
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