Money Wasted: Scott Can Save by Looking at Prisons

Click here to read my latest column in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

Sources:

• $2.5 billion shortfall: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
• Scott wants to cut taxes: St. Petersburg Times
• State and local budgets: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
• Public vs. private workers: Rutgers professor Jeffrey Keefe
• States with bargaining rights: Berkeley professor Robert Reich
• Scott's $1 bn from DOC in 7 yrs: Sunshine State News
• Growing food, competitively bidding contracts, $1.5 bn salaries/wages: PolitiFact Florida
• FL incarceration rate, crime rate: National Institute of Corrections
• Incarceration growth: Prison Policy Institute
• Drug use growth: Law Enforcement Against Prohibition
• Portugal: Cato Institute (Glenn Greenwald)
• 1% substance abuse budget: Department of Corrections
• 82% nonviolent: Nicholas D. Kristof
• 50% mental illness: Justice Policy Institute
• Racial stats: The Sentencing Project
• $2 BN, $100 MM: Harvard professor Jeffrey Miron (Criminal Justice Policy Foundation)
• Department of Juvenile Justice cuts: WINK News
• Wall Street's profits: CBS News