Florida's prison woes rooted in reorganization (Jeb doctrine fails)

[seafan]

And if we are, we can embed in society a sense of caring that makes government less necessary. There would be no greater tribute to our maturity as a society than if we can make these buildings around us empty of workers; silent monuments to the time when government played a larger role than it deserved or could adequately fill.
--- Jeb Bush, 2003 INAUGURAL ADDRESS

And, now with our prison system, as with our gutted public school system, poor high school graduation rates, skyrocketing property insurance and his GOP cronies --many now under indictment-- perched all over our state government, we have Jeb Bush to credit.




Florida Department of Corrections' woes rooted in reorganization

By KAREN VOYLES
July 27, 2006

A push to centralize operations of the Florida Department of Corrections is being blamed for some of the agency's recent controversy and woes.

A report by the management consulting firm MGT of America Inc. found that dismantling financial and personnel systems in prisons and moving those duties to four regional offices around the state created conditions that contributed to recent corruption cases.
In a letter summarizing the findings of the 200-page report for prisons Secretary James McDonough, Ken McGinnis of MGT wrote that, "The lack of local fiscal oversight and basic management controls greatly increases opportunity for abuses by corrupt individuals."
Another MGT inspector, Karl Becker, told The Sun that centralization and the "stripping out of administrative support and controls basically opens the gates for the types of problems you have seen recently in the Florida Department of Corrections."

snip

"As often happens when organizations revamp themselves, this went too far. They got so caught up in their zealousness that they cut meat and bone," McDonough said. "The department went from too much fiefdoms in local institutions to being overly centralized and I need to bring that back into balance. I need to bring the pendulum back to the middle."

Shortly after Gov. Jeb Bush took office more than seven years ago, he appointed Michael Moore as prison secretary. Among the policies Moore implemented was a massive cost-cutting effort that included eliminating the business manager, personnel director and training officer jobs at each prison. Those duties were assigned to staff at the four regional offices. At the time, prison officials said the increased use of online technology would make it possible to cost-effectively handle accounting and personnel issues at the centralized locations.

The three-page synopsis sent to McDonough said the full 60-page report of recommendations addressed myriad issues, most of which could be traced to the push for centralizing oversight of prisons. But the synopsis cited three critical situations.

snip

[rzemanfl]

1. The problem with privatization is that the system is broken and

there is no way to put it back to what it was before. All the competent people have moved on, nobody at the privatized agencies gives a shit because they get crap pay and benefits-only the executives at them make out.

[gratuitous]

2. It's all Michael Moore's fault!

No, not that one, the Michael Moore hired by Jeb! to run this little program. Republicans are always harping on the fact that government programs don't work; and sure enough, when the voters are stupid enough to put Republicans in charge of government programs . . . they don't work! (I'm referring to the programs and the Republicans.)