Candidates differ greatly on criminal justice

Editor's note: An earlier version of this story misattributed a quote from an executive at the Pretrial Justice Institute. The statement was made by Senior Vice President Rachel Sottile Logvin.

At dueling high-class receptions in downtown Jacksonville on Thursday, just blocks from the Duval County jail, Andrew Gillum and Ron DeSantis delivered speeches that demonstrated the sharp divide in their personalities, their policies and their priorities. No issue illustrated that schism more clearly than criminal justice.

To Gillum, the state is wasting money locking up people who deserve second chances.

To DeSantis, any retreat from the state’s tough-on-crime policies is an offense to police and will reverse the state’s 50-year low crime rates.

Gillum, the Tallahassee mayor, talks about criminal justice in an aspirational tone. He talks of reforming the state’s bail system, of investing in re-entry services, of ending mass incarceration.

“We have to reform the criminal justice system in this state,” Gillum pronounced to a sold-out crowd of hundreds at the local NAACP annual dinner. “And it begins with passing Amendment 4 and re-enfranchising a million people. And let me tell you it doesn’t just end with rights restoration because we have got to take it to the next level.”

DeSantis, the former congressman who until recently represented the suburbs south of Jacksonville, avoids offering his own policy proposals, instead invoking fear that any change to the status quo will threaten Florida’s safety.

“We’ve had good policies,” DeSantis said Thursday night at a local Republican fundraiser as he insulted Gillum’s stance on criminal justice policies. “When people are dangerous and they commit crimes that hurt people, we held them accountable. We got them off the streets. We had elected officials who would stand by the men and women of law enforcement and have their backs and we devoted the resources necessary to keeping our communities safe.”

Despite Florida’s low crime rates and despite prison admissions declining for nine of the last 10 years, Florida’s prison and jails budgets are higher than ever. Due to long sentences, the inmate population has stayed stubbornly near its all-time high, and this past year, the state budget gave $2.3 billion for the Department of Corrections, and even that wasn’t enough — the agency hit a $79 million deficit.

Locally, the city of Jacksonville will spend $116 million on its jail this year, more than any other line-item except police patrol and fire operations.

During his Thursday night speech, DeSantis said Gillum was supported by Dream Defenders, which he called a radical group that wants to take money from law enforcement and give it to social programs. The Dream Defenders is a group of activists that formed after the death of Trayvon Martin; it staged the longest sit-in at the Florida Capitol in recent memory, calling for a change to Stand Your Ground and for reducing drug incarceration rates. Afterward, the group also focused on police abuses. “When you do that, you’re basically begging for a crime spree.”

Gillum, however, cast his plan as fiscally responsible. “What I'm saying is it's not about hard or soft; it's about being smart,” he said in an interview. “I'm talking about how we save lives, how we save money and at the same time keep our communities safe.”

But DeSantis said he didn’t believe the state was incarcerating too many people, and he said while he’s usually fiscally conservative “our job is to protect the public,” and he said incarcerating people was a way to keep the public safe. His campaign said he would continue supporting mandatory minimum sentences.

Gillum never mentioned DeSantis in his speech, but DeSantis inveighed against Gillum in nearly every sentence. He said that Gillum was not only incompetent, but that Tallahassee’s high crime rate “flows from his radical ideology.”

DeSantis cited a website, NeighborhoodScout, that he said had called Tallahassee "one of the most crime-ridden cities of any size, anywhere in the country." In fact, while in the past, Tallahassee made the website's top 100 most dangerous cities, the most recent rankings didn't include the city.

And according to FBI data, the Tallahassee Police Department did not report the highest crime rate in the state. Instead, it was 28th, behind departments in Orlando, Daytona Beach and Broward County Sheriff’s Office. Leon County had the highest crime rate in the state mostly due to property crimes, and it had the fifth highest violent crime rate. Leon’s crime rates last year were slightly lower than when Gillum took office in 2015.

Duval's violent crime rates, which are close to Leon's, are the highest among the state's most populous counties.

Still, DeSantis hammered Gillum over crime in Tallahassee repeatedly, painting a dark picture of a city where "it's not just murders and sexual assaults and violent crime but a city ridden with property crimes. … It is an absolute disaster."

In an interview, DeSantis avoided answering policy questions by criticizing Gillum. DeSantis’ own campaign struggled to answer policy questions. Initially, his campaign said the state’s Truth-in-Sentencing law, which requires inmates serve at least 85 percent of their sentence, had “been extremely effective in reducing our crime rate.” The next day, DeSantis’ campaign chairwoman Susie Wiles called a reporter to say DeSantis hadn’t yet decided his criminal justice policies.

Wiles promised to send out a detailed platform last week. It was never sent.

When asked in person for specifics, DeSantis said he wouldn’t know what changes might be necessary until after the state collects more information as a result of a recent data bill.

State Sen. Jeff Brandes, a St. Petersburg Republican who has not endorsed DeSantis, said that rationale made no sense. “We have an X-ray of Florida that says we have cancer. The data bill is an MRI that gives us more detail on the type of cancer we have, but we already know we have cancer and there are only so many treatment options for the cancer we have. We know what the treatments are. We just don’t have the courage to implement them. We know what’s wrong. We’re just going to have more data that tells us what’s wrong.”

Brandes said if the next governor doesn’t do something to rein in Florida’s incarceration rates, “you’re going to have to take money away from health care to fund prisons.”

“We have to have a vision in diversion, in sentencing, in re-entry back into society, in what actually happens in prison and what we want prison to be, not just warehousing but helping people get back on track,” Brandes said. “We have to have an overriding theme, but we have to have vision in each of these areas. This isn’t an adversarial issue. This is collegial, and we’re going to have honest debates, but we have to look at the best practice across the country.”

While DeSantis finds no room for agreement with his opponent, in Gillum’s own conversations, he goes out of his way to praise Republicans. “One thing that might bring us together is the huge suck and drain this is on the state budget," Gillum said. "These are resources where we’re throwing good after bad when there are smarter and frankly more effective ways to get after criminal justice reform that makes our state safer and saves the state money.”

When the candidates were asked who they would seek counsel from on criminal justice issues, DeSantis exclusively listed prosecutors, while Gillum named conservative think tanks Right on Crime and the James Madison Institute.

Gillum said he would base his bail reform proposal off of one enacted by former Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. Gillum said he wants to use a risk-assessment tool that only allows prosecutors and judges to automatically allow nonviolent defendants out of jail if they’re not a flight risk. For other defendants, he said he wants judges to weigh the individual circumstances to determine if they should have to pay money to get out.

Gillum called bail reform a top priority among criminal justice issues. "Those who have not been found guilty who are sitting in jail, … that's where I will put my focus."

Pretrial Justice Institute Senior Vice President Rachel Sottile Logvin said the issue of bail reform should invigorate conservatives and liberals alike. She said detention should only rarely be used for people before trial, and judges should be able to assess what supports or services might be necessary for those before release. "I am innocent until proven guilty but you've made an assumption of guilt and you can seize my assets and I'm not getting that back? The surety insurance industry is preying on the poor."

While DeSantis has received support from the Koch network — related committees that back libertarian initiatives — his own policies on criminal justice issues stand in contrast to those groups’ views, particularly their opposition to mandatory minimums and support for bail reform.

Mark Holden, chairman of the Koch-funded Freedom Partners, “A lot of people in prison don’t need to be in prison at all or don’t need to be there so long,” he said. “The criminal justice system needs to be revamped.” Similar to Gillum, he said states need to prioritize restructuring their punishment codes and seriously consider bail reform.

“We take pride in being consistent with lawmakers,” said Andres Malave with the Koch-related Americans for Prosperity Action committee, “and we will advocate aggressively for the policy regardless of who’s in office. At the end of the day, we want to reduce barriers for as many people as possible and create more opportunity for all Floridians to be productive members of society.”

DeSantis and Gillum have split endorsements from sheriffs, with DeSantis earning endorsements from conservative sheriffs who say Gillum doesn't show enough respect to law enforcement and Gillum earning endorsements from progressives who touted Leon County's reduction in violent crime.

There was one area where the two candidates agreed. Both said they support diversion programs.

After Jacksonville's State Attorney's Office established the first wrongful conviction unit in the state, Gillum said he wants to expand the units to more prosecutors offices.

Gillum has also said he supports efforts in the Florida Senate to limit driver’s license suspensions to driving infractions. He supports giving judges the ability to override mandatory minimums under certain facts. He supports expanding adult civil citations across the state. He also supports an independent commission to overhaul the state’s sentencing guidelines.”

Florida is limited in its ability to enact reform because the state Constitution bans the Legislature from enacting retroactive sentencing reforms. Amendment 11 would change that. Gillum said he supports Amendment 11, but he also supports re-establishing parole in Florida and giving inmates the ability to earn more gain time for good behavior.

DeSantis opposes the effort to automatically restore voting rights through Amendment 4 and has been silent on Amendment 11, but he has endorsed Amendment 6, a victims rights effort that supporters say will ensure victims are respected while critics say it could potentially hinder investigations.

Denise Rock, who advocates for incarcerated people with her nonprofit Florida Cares, said changing the gain-time laws is a top priority for the families of people in prison. But the most necessary policy, she said, is Gillum’s proposal to create a citizens advocacy board to review prison conditions.

Gillum said he is optimistic that as governor he could get the Florida House — recently, the more reluctant of the two legislative chambers — on board with reforms. He cited a shared fellowship he took part in with presumed future Speaker Jose Oliva. “While he's very strong in his belief system, he also hates to waste money.”

He said if the Legislature was unwilling to enact policies, he viewed the constitutional amendment process as a potential backstop.

“Sometimes in politics," DeSantis told his crowd Thursday night, "people will say there's not a dime's worth of difference between the candidates. It doesn't matter. People cannot say that about our governor's race. We have two very stark pathways here that we can take.”

Andrew Pantazi: (904) 359-4310