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Florida Dept. of Corrections Secretary Ricky Dixon Joins Preston · Conversations: Special Guests with Preston Scott

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Well, good morning. If you're just joining us, remember the
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: first couple of hours, like all hours of the Morning
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Show with Prestin Scott can be found on the iHeartRadio app.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Just look for the Morning Show with Preston Scott podcast.
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  Speaker 1: It's very simple in the iHeart app. You just type
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  Speaker 1: in my name and the podcast will pop right up
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  Speaker 1: under podcasts. Simple as that. And the second podcast you'll
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  Speaker 1: see is the Conversations podcast and you will find my
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: conversation with this gentleman in both of those podcasts. Joining
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  Speaker 1: me is the Florida's Secretary of Corrections, Ricky Dixon. Good morning, sir,
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: how are you hey?
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  Speaker 2: Good morning, Preston. How are you doing.
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  Speaker 1: I'm doing well. How are things inside the world of corrections.
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  Speaker 2: Going well? We've got a lot of challenges, as you
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  Speaker 2: and I have spoken about several times, we were continuing
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  Speaker 2: to continue forward progress. Grateful for several conversations we've had
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  Speaker 2: this year with a number of Senators and reports and
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  Speaker 2: to include the Speaker of the House. I've had a
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  Speaker 2: chance to meet personally with Speaker Perez and President Al Britain.
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  Speaker 2: Also Cheer McClure in the House and Chair Hooper over
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  Speaker 2: in the Senate, and I just can't say enough how
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  Speaker 2: appreciative of I am of the time they spent with
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  Speaker 2: me to kind of understand the challenges we're facing. No
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  Speaker 2: commitments ever until sessions over, but educations are that they
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  Speaker 2: get it and they understand the challenges facing us and
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  Speaker 2: the need for support, the especially fiscal support, and in
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  Speaker 2: so many areas. So we're holding out with a lot
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  Speaker 2: of hope for a great session this year and to
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  Speaker 2: continue moving us forward.
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  Speaker 1: You know, I use the term what's going on inside corrections?
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  Speaker 1: And I kind of did that intentionally because Secretary, as
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  Speaker 1: you well know, the rank and file people of a state,
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  Speaker 1: not just Florida, but any state, they don't really understand
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  Speaker 1: what happens inside the walls of a correctional institution. Give
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  Speaker 1: us a list of maybe some of the priorities that
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  Speaker 1: you're focused on for this session.
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  Speaker 2: Sure, what happens inside the fences is so dependent upon
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  Speaker 2: what happens outside here until has hitting the law of
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  Speaker 2: support that we get. And thankfully, I want to just
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  Speaker 2: credit my boss government of Santas. He has been very
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  Speaker 2: bold over the last several years, and probably more bold
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  Speaker 2: than ever this year in the support we had in
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  Speaker 2: the government's recommendations to ensure we continue to modernize and
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  Speaker 2: stand up our system and recover. Had he not activated
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  Speaker 2: the National Guard a few years ago, we would really
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  Speaker 2: be in trouble with That kind of sustained us and
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  Speaker 2: got us to a good place. But to answer your question,
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  Speaker 2: nothing more important this year, and there's a lot of
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  Speaker 2: things important I don't want to take away from any
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  Speaker 2: of the other areas, but nothing more important than pay
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  Speaker 2: for our staff. Competitive pay that helps us attract confident
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  Speaker 2: people to do this difficult work. So we have probably
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  Speaker 2: the most aggressive pay increased request in our history. We're
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  Speaker 2: asking to go to twenty eight dollars an hour, which
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  Speaker 2: may sound like a lot that we're competing with, you know,
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  Speaker 2: upwards of thirty five dollars an hour all around us,
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  Speaker 2: to include Alabama Department of Corrections out in the in
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  Speaker 2: the you know, we have a number of prisons in
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  Speaker 2: the Panhandle, and you know, after eighteen months and those
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  Speaker 2: prisons are at about seventy three thousand a year thirty
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  Speaker 2: five dollars an hour. So we don't think we're overshooting
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  Speaker 2: this at all, especially when you consider the you know,
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  Speaker 2: seventy nine percent of our staff right now our officers
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  Speaker 2: have less than five years, and seventy percent of them
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  Speaker 2: have less than than three years. And then the things
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  Speaker 2: related to staffing or lack thereof, they're indicative of a
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  Speaker 2: system that's not healthy. When you see your inmate on
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  Speaker 2: inmate assaults and inmate on staff assaults increased, you know,
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  Speaker 2: so significantly. As I've explained in front of the House
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  Speaker 2: and Senate committees several times, we know we've got to
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  Speaker 2: focus on that. And it's not just correctional officers, it's
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  Speaker 2: community corrections officers, our our maintenance staff, our you know,
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  Speaker 2: classification and support staff and institutions. We just really are
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  Speaker 2: laser focused on that this year. And again no you know,
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  Speaker 2: promises until it's over, but all indications are you know,
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  Speaker 2: people in leadership understand that. So we're holding out hope
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  Speaker 2: for a for a good year. Other priorities are new
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  Speaker 2: construction or new construction in some of the existing locations.
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  Speaker 2: You know, we have two issues running in parallel right now.
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  Speaker 2: One is deteriorating physical plants because of the third maintenance
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  Speaker 2: and lack of funding in past years. At the same time,
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  Speaker 2: the population is growing to a large degree. As I've
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  Speaker 2: shared before, up ten thousand inmates. Sin it's January of
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  Speaker 2: twenty twenty one. So we've got to meet those challenges
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  Speaker 2: with new construction. And we have a number of existing
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  Speaker 2: facilities where the footprints large enough to allow us to
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  Speaker 2: either build new housing units or demo old inefficient housing
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  Speaker 2: units and put in the facilities that we can operate
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  Speaker 2: and gain economies of scale. And then finally, technology, just
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  Speaker 2: modernization of the system, getting rid of clipboards and paper
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  Speaker 2: and operating as modern facilities operate and gaining efficiencies there
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  Speaker 2: to help with some of the fiscal challenges from that standpoint,
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  Speaker 2: as well as just better operations and safer operations overall.
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  Speaker 1: Secretary Ricky Dixon with me for one more segment. Stand by. Secretary,
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  Speaker 1: he heads up the Florida Department of Corrections, And as
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  Speaker 1: I remind you, when we talk about this topic, it's
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  Speaker 1: not the Department of Prisons, it's the Department of Corrections. Secretary,
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  Speaker 1: you talked about the prison population growing. Give us a
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  Speaker 1: little bit of a feel about staffing and relationship to growth.
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  Speaker 1: I take it the staffing has not been able to
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  Speaker 1: keep up with the growth of inmates.
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  Speaker 2: That's correct. You know, we have two issues. First of all,
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  Speaker 2: enough positions to accommodate the growth, and we're addressing that.
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  Speaker 2: And as a matter of fact, we've requested an additional
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  Speaker 2: five hundred positions this year. But no matter how many
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  Speaker 2: positions you have, you know, we could have another three thousand.
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  Speaker 2: But if we don't have adequate pay or competitive pay
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  Speaker 2: to attract you know, candidates to fill those positions, especially
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  Speaker 2: confident candidates that meet the requirements, then where we're not
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  Speaker 2: where we need to be. So both of those things
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  Speaker 2: kind of work in uise, and so we are addressing
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  Speaker 2: both fronts this year. And as I just there's a
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  Speaker 2: video we just put out recently of one of our
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  Speaker 2: officers down at Day that was stabbed five times and
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  Speaker 2: went out in a helicopter. A few months back. I
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  Speaker 2: had a chance to talk to him and he, you know,
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  Speaker 2: described to me the incident, the the circumstances of where
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  Speaker 2: he was and alone, brand new, not train yet. And
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  Speaker 2: unfortunately that's the reality because of the conditions. We put
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  Speaker 2: these officers in situations that I didn't experience three decades ago.
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  Speaker 2: When I started, you know, when I started in a
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  Speaker 2: housing unit as a young correctional officer, there was three
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  Speaker 2: or four of us in there. Together and you had
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  Speaker 2: someone to call for help if something happened. And in
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  Speaker 2: many cases, due to these situation wations, we're working officers alone,
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  Speaker 2: just one officer in the housing units, sometimes with one
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  Speaker 2: hundred plus two hundred inmates, and that that's not the
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  Speaker 2: way this system's designed. So we are doing everything possible
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  Speaker 2: to recover from from that. And I do, as always,
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  Speaker 2: just want to recognize our staff to do this job
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  Speaker 2: and have the you know, the skill sets to walk
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  Speaker 2: into situations and de escalate instead of escalate. You know,
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  Speaker 2: you occasionally read about something that went wrong or an
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  Speaker 2: officer that didn't have a situation just right, and that
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  Speaker 2: happens from time to time, and we have processes ease
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  Speaker 2: and we deal with it. But for the most part,
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  Speaker 2: just hundreds of thousands of hours of interaction every day
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  Speaker 2: with correctional staff and other staff in our system, interacting
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  Speaker 2: with population that that do so in a way to
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  Speaker 2: again de escalate and keep calm in these very volatile
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  Speaker 2: ENVIRONMENTSS just just hats off to them for the job
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  Speaker 2: they do.
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  Speaker 1: You mentioned the facilities that need improvements that you know,
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  Speaker 1: these these are hard projects that have to get done.
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  Speaker 1: How many institutions are there in the state of Florida,
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  Speaker 1: and out of the total, what's the percentage that needs
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  Speaker 1: some kind of physical rehabilitation, whether they need new facilities
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  Speaker 1: constructed or or a renovation of an existing facility. What's
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  Speaker 1: the percentage?
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  Speaker 2: Okay, there's there's forty nine state facilities, and each of
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  Speaker 2: those facilities may have several different units for prisons associated
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  Speaker 2: with them, So there's about one hundred and forty five total.
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  Speaker 2: You know, independent prisons you might say, are units of
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  Speaker 2: very varying sizes and number of in terms of population
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  Speaker 2: of one hundred percent needs sufficient physical plant maintenance money
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  Speaker 2: to keep the you know, basic maintenance and preventedive maintenance up.
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  Speaker 2: And in many cases we've not kept up with the
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  Speaker 2: times with rising cost to even give each wardens enough
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  Speaker 2: in their budget to do, you know, to keep up
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  Speaker 2: basic plumbing and electrical maintenance. And we're constantly having to
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  Speaker 2: sh money around in triodge and to kind of prioritize
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  Speaker 2: and deal with that as best we can. In terms
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  Speaker 2: of major renovation, I would say a good one third
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  Speaker 2: of the system is in need, either in one or
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  Speaker 2: more housing units or support buildings for some major renovation.
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  Speaker 2: You know, everything from from roots to the building envelope
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  Speaker 2: to interior renovations and plumbing and things like that. Again,
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  Speaker 2: we take what we're given and we triodds and we
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  Speaker 2: kind of tackle the most pressing issues first. But several
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  Speaker 2: studies have been done over the years. Ind caten that
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  Speaker 2: we're talking, you know, millions and millions of dollars to
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  Speaker 2: get us to a position where we need to be.
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  Speaker 2: We're asking for fifty six million dollars this year to
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  Speaker 2: do in addition to another forty plus million for basic maintenance.
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  Speaker 2: But we want to get in a position where that
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  Speaker 2: fifty six million is recurring, where we can do you know,
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  Speaker 2: engineering and plans to continue to build housing units and
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  Speaker 2: demo existing housing units.
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  Speaker 1: Secretary, thanks for the time. We'll circle back around as
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  Speaker 1: the session ends and see how things ended up for you.
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  Speaker 1: Appreciate it.
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  Speaker 2: Thank you as always, President, Thank you absolutely.
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  Speaker 1: Secretary of Corrections for the State of Florida, Ricky Dixon,
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  Speaker 1: my guest seventeen, passed the hour