Florida Compassionate Release Bill Excludes the Usual
State Rep. Bobby DuBose filed House Bill 837 which would grant early release to a prisoner who is suffering from “a significant terminal or non terminal condition, disease, or syndrome that has rendered the inmate so physically or cognitively impaired, debilitated, or incapacitated as to create a reasonable probability that the inmate does not constitute a danger to himself or herself or to others.” The bill would also set up an Aging Inmate Release Program so that inmates would be eligible if they are at least 70 years of age and have served at least 10 years in prison.
On the surface, this bill seems like good criminal justice reform, but as usual, the Bill excludes the usual exception for people convicted of murder or a sexual offense.
It’s time the legislature acknowledged that “sexual offenses” comprise an extremely broad range of offenses with differing culpability and differing levels of risk.
Please let Rep DuBose know that you oppose the carve out.
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I hope that sometime before this bill becomes law, a person or persons representing ACLU, NARSOL, FAC, WAR, or others, can go to the committees in person and argue this. This is nothing more than elder abuse! Some unscrupulous hospitals do this too. They call it patient dumping or homeless dumping.
Even though I want to see ALL Florida inmates receive “compassionate release”, there is nothing compassionate about FDOC or our legislature. My husband told me about two months ago, that an inmate was released to his family before his sentence was up because FDOC could not afford his very high medical expenses. This early release is already being done without such a bill having been passed in Florida. An aging, ill inmate can cost the prison system around one million dollars. FDOC and the legislature just want to dump the expense of these elderly inmates back onto society. Mr. Dubose is only trying to find ways to cut the burgeoning costs of Florida’s dungeon-like prison system but receive credit as being compassionate. If he were truly compassionate, he would be requesting that ALL inmates receive this proposed compassionate release.
What would the bill do that FDOC isn’t already doing? I don’t get it.
Jacob, that is what I do not understand.
By the way, Jacob, a person from Duval is trying to organize our 6-county area. He has some GREAT ideas and is extremely knowledgeable. He is a doer. He needs to know what county sex offender ordinances are out there. I have found that Municode is good but not perfect, and I do not always know what towns are in each county. I can take care of Clay County. To the best of my knowledge, St. Johns has no town/county ordinances.
We also need to know about Nassau, Putnam, and Baker. Our FAC website is probably not the best place to be doing all of this. I give FAC permission to give my personal email address to anyone who can help me with the info on sex offender ordinances in St. Johns, Putnam, Nassau, and Baker.
My county has two ordinances. Let me see if I can’t get them scanned in.
this is such a crock. Florida is just trying to rid themselves of the liability of caring for the sick and aged under the guise of “compassion”. If there was that kind of compassion, there would be no carve outs. Granted I would rather die free but how many men and women are going to commit another crime so they can be returned and cared for OR in their anger at being dumped think, what the hell, I’m dying anyway and go do something stupid.
Compassion….why don’t they set up a way to care for these men and women at end of life. That would be compassion.
I’m usualy a very positive person. But I’m really having hard time seeing the compassion in this bill. They wait till a person is literally dying and then unload them becuase of the expense and call it compassion? And then have the nerve to carve out sex offenders? There aren’t enough bad words for me to express my disappointment in most law makers. I so sick of this kind of legislation.
I visit this website fairly regularly but don’t often post. However, this particular one really got under my skin. I have known a number of men in prison who were doing their time chained to their bed–even though they were unable to move anyway. If a person is not a threat, then it doesn’t matter what brought them to prison, they are not a threat.
I am going to say something here and it will likely be taken wrong by someone. My 89 year old mother has advanced Alzheimer’s. She barely recognizes me or my siblings let alone anyone else. I would love to drag the sponsor of such a stupid bill to her home. Let the sponsor see her feeble attempts at communication, smell the smell of someone who cannot control their bodily functions. Then, drag that same sponsor to a prison–any prison–who has someone in a similar state and ask him what the difference is.
If my mother was incarcerated, I would be tempted to send the sponsor a picture of her. Using the same sympathetic tactic that the ASPCA does when they show illegal puppy farms. The difference here is that we are HUMAN. Yet, what does it say when the size of a pig pen is constitutionally mandated as larger than the cells that we incarcerate our neighbors.
To Representative Du Bose…SHAME ON YOU. I hope you are shamed into withdrawing such an ill-thought bill. I, for one, will be sending you an e-mail.
Has anyone thought of what are going to become of these old, terminally ill, unable to care for their self, people when they are let out of prison?? The majority probably has no family left to care for them and if they do , may not have the means to care for them. Are we going to have terminally ill people living in the woods or under bridges?? This bill is nothing more then a cost cutting tool for the prison system. It has very little to do with compassion for a human being. I may be wrong but any prisoner that has been in prison a long time and develops an illness that is going to take his life, maybe he or she would rather have “3 hot’s and a cot” in prison as to face death on the street. And shame on Rep. DuBose for filing such an inhumane Bill. Carving out Sexual Offenders and even murderers in an aging out program is just as inhumane . How does DuBose expect a 70 year old that would be on a Sex Offender Registry , make a living for his self? Even a 70 year old murderer might have a hard time finding a job. This really sounds like a MORE PUNISH BILL, not something that will do any good for anyone except the prison system.