For more than two years, members of the Florida National Guard have been dispatched to the chronically understaffed Florida prison system.
A state report from 2023 estimated that state prisons needed to invest $6 billion in the prison system to keep aging facilities functional at current levels for the next 20 years.
“This is a policy failure and this is a leadership failure, and the solution has been to put the National Guard in. That is not a long-term solution,” said Jeff Brandes, founder of the Florida Policy Project.