BY DAN HILDEBRAN
Monitor Editor
TALLAHASSEE— Twenty-five-year Department of Corrections veteran Ricky Dixon is taking the top spot at the Florida Department of Corrections.
Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed the deputy secretary to the agency’s top job pending the retirement of current Secretary Mark Inch.
Inch was appointed in January 2019.
In a Nov. 17 news release announcing Dixon’s promotion, DeSantis also announced his plan to increase beginning correctional officer pay by 16%, going from the current $33,500 a year to $38,750.
In addition, new officers can receive a $3,000 bonus for joining the agency while current correctional officers will get an extra $1,500 and current probation officers will get a $3,000 bonus.
“As so many cities and states choose to disrespect, degrade and defund the work of men and women in uniform,” the governor said in the release, “we want Florida to continue valuing them today, tomorrow and for generations to come.”
Earlier this year, Dixon told a Florida House subcommittee that staffing levels within Florida prisons had reached dangerously low levels, adding that although standards require three to four officers to staff a dormitory of 200 inmates, a single officer is now watching over those inmates in the vast majority of the state’s lockups.
“Having only two staff in a dorm like that is extremely dangerous, and it should only occur for short periods of time,” Dixon told the House Criminal Justice and Public Safety Subcommittee during a Sept. 22 hearing. “At least with two staff, the concept is that if something happens to one, the other is available to call for assistance. Never should a facility run with less than two staff (in a dorm).”
“The reality is at this very moment most of the housing units…throughout the state are operating not with two staff but with one staff present,” he added.
“That’s the case at this moment. That will be the case this evening when the inmates are most active, and that will be the case tonight when we’re all sleeping safely in our beds.”
Photo: Dixon
