Florida TaxWatch and Collins Center Release Study on Prison Bonding

Florida TaxWatch and the Collins Center teamed up to unveil a new report on Wednesday that maintains that prison construction is putting the Sunshine State residents in debt.

The study, which is entitled A Billion Dollars and Growing: Why Prison Bonding Is Tougher on Floridas Taxpayers than on Crime, argues that lease revenue bonds, which are used to fund the building of new prisons, have hurt the state.

Floridas taxpayers owe more than $1 billion, or about $200 per household, to pay for recently built state prisons, said Dominic Calabro, the president and CEO of Florida TaxWatch.Borrowing to build more prisons is not the way Florida should be addressing public safety. Florida needs to enact comprehensive, smart justice reforms that keep us safe while saving us money.

Bonding is one of the ways weve avoided facing the consequences of mass incarceration in our state, but we simply cannot afford this,said April Young, a vice president for the Collins Center.

The study focuses on the growth of the states prison population, noting that there were less than 20,000 inmates in 1980 and more than 102,000 last year -- and the price went up accordingly, from $169 million in 1980 to almost $2.4 billion in 2010.

The full study can be found here.