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Scott’s vanity at the expense of the State of Florida and DOC was especially apparently as former secretary Crews testified that he was told to delay, downplay, or hide all of these issues until after Scott’s 2014 reelection campaign. This all despite Crews’ 2013 testimony that DOC was receiving $500 million less in funding from 2007 despite having 9,000 more inmates. Some say Scott’s treatment of DOC during his tenure as Governor were not different than a corporate raider, taking what he wanted and leaving the agency behind destitute.

However, new Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has shown by action that he is fixing the problems at DOC left behind by Scott. Florida’s new Governor appointed former United States Army major general Mark Inch to lead the agency. Inch has used his remarkable background to lead the Florida Department of Corrections away from the terror and maltreatment caused by Rick Scott, requiring a higher caliber of employee, requiring more and better training of correctional officers, and firing employees immediately instead of allowing them to continue working and creating more liability for the State of Florida. This proactive approach has been recognized statewide. Despite the incredible successes of DeSantis and Inch at the agency in only one year, both still continue to fix problems created by Rick Scott at the Florida Department of Corrections.

By ridding the Florida Department of Corrections of the liabilities created by Rick Scott and improving the agency over the next three years, DeSantis will be able to do what no Florida Governor has done since the 1980s: make the agency safer and operate the agency at a lower cost to taxpayers by confronting problems proactively instead of hiding them. This will allow Governor DeSantis to tout these successes with the agency, deservedly so, as a positive in his reelection instead of the Achilles heel it has been for Governors over the past thirty years.