CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Florida’s Prison System Is Quietly Trying to Censor the Truth

I know crime statutes and dates can be boring and hard to read. Please bear with me for a minute. These laws are written a certain way for a reason. Staying in the dark about them is part of how this system keeps swallowing people, families, and whole communities, regardless of the harm it causes. This article isn’t just statutes and dates; it’s about what those choices do to real people.

Rehabilitation is supposed to be the goal of Florida’s justice system, of every justice system. But Florida’s own laws say something different. Florida’s sentencing statute, section 921.002, states that the primary purpose of sentencing is to punish the offender, and that rehabilitation is only a “desired goal” secondary to punishment.

Florida abolished parole for most offenses starting in the 1980s. For crimes committed after October 1, 1983, parole is basically gone, and by the mid‑1990s it was fully abolished for almost all new cases. People sentenced after that aren’t waiting on a parole board to see if they’ve changed. They’re serving fixed time. The law forces most of them to serve at least eighty-five percent of their sentence. Limited gain time is the only thing that can touch the rest, shaving down the years above that floor but never below it. Lawmakers have talked about lowering that floor and putting rehabilitation back into the language of sentencing, but bills to drop it to seventy two percent have died. People already sentenced under the old rules must still live under those rules. Punishment is still the baseline, and any talk of rehabilitation mostly affects the guidelines for new sentences. I’m glad people are finally pushing Florida to talk about rehabilitation and to think about changing the eighty five percent rule. That’s more than they used to do. But the men and women already trapped under the old statutes still must live inside them. The structure they built around punishment first and no real parole hasn’t gone away for us.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Florida pushed hard into tough on crime politics. Lawmakers killed most real parole, stacked on minimum mandatory sentences, and built a Criminal Punishment Code that centers punishment and incapacitation. Those minimum mandatories tie judges’ hands. In 2010, the judge in my case told me he didn’t want to sentence me to ten years, but his hands were tied. The sentence was already written into the statute. The system’s true goal is punishment, not rehabilitation, and that isn’t just how it feels inside. It’s written into the law.

Most states don’t do it this way. In other parts of the country, people still have a meaningful chance at parole. They can go in front of a board, show the work they’ve done, the programs they’ve completed, the ways they’ve changed, and sometimes come home early because someone believes rehabilitation is real. In Florida, for most of us, that door is welded shut. What other states call parole is not a real option in Florida DOC now. You can work, you can study, you can try to become a better man or woman, but the structure you’re stuck in was built to hold you, not to help you heal.

On paper, they call it the criminal justice system, like it’s just a set of laws and offices “operating” the way they’re supposed to. Inside, it doesn’t feel like a system that’s running well. It feels like a machine that keeps grinding on and on, no matter how much damage it does.

Florida also has a law that lets the state put a lien on any money tied to a literary or cinematic account of a crime: section 944.512, the state’s claim on proceeds from crime stories. Florida’s version of this law didn’t come out of nowhere. In the 1970s, states started passing “Son of Sam” laws after serial killers like David Berkowitz tried to........

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