Dept. of Corrections offering up to $6,000 in hiring and retention bonuses to recruit new officers

A month after Gov. Ron DeSantis vetoed legislation that would have provided tens of millions of dollars to the Florida Department of Corrections (FDC) for pay increases for correctional officers, the department announced on Friday that it is now offering up to $6,000 in hiring and retention bonuses at select prisons throughout the state.

They include a new $1,000 hiring bonus at 10 correctional institutions and, at “select institutions,” an already existing $5,000 retention bonus for eligible officers, providing up to $6,000 in total incentives.

“The Florida Department of Corrections is committed to investing in the men and women who choose to serve and support Florida’s public safety mission,” said Corrections Assistant Deputy Secretary of Institutions Hope Gartman in a written statement.

Correctional officers in Florida prisons make $22 an hour. In January, then-Secretary Ricky Dixon asked a legislative committee for $374 million to raise base pay for corrections officers, probation officers, inspectors, and non-uniformed staff that would raise their pay to $28 an hour.

Dixon told the Senate Appropriations Committee on Criminal and Civil Justice that it would have been “the most significant pay increase I’ve seen in three decades in this business,” adding that it would “make a major impact” in retaining corrections officers, who often leave for other law enforcement agencies that pay more. (Dixon recently stepped down from the department.)

The Legislature ultimately authorized a $91.5 million pay increase for Department of Corrections employees, which would have boosted the minimum correctional officer base pay to $24 an hour.

However, that funding was wiped out when Gov. Ron DeSantis vetoed legislation last month that included $50 million a year in corrections capital projects for 40 years and mandated construction of a new 600-bed corrections hospital in Gilchrist County funded by bonds.

In his veto letter, DeSantis said he had offered the $374 million in funding that Dixon had requested, but “it was not contingent on incurring massive new debt obligations for constructing a new prison hospital.”

He went on to describe the funding proposal a “D.C. swamp approach to correctional pay” that he called “a game I am not willing to pay.”