Why former Florida Department of Corrections Secretary Ricky Dixon says there's a 'resource problem'

Former Florida Department of Corrections Secretary Ricky Dixon retired this summer after decades with the agency. Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed Richard Comerford to succeed him.

But for Dixon, he's been around the agency almost his entire life. He was first introduced as a kid living on prison property in Cross City while his dad worked as a warden.

And in 1996, he started his own journey with the FDOC as a correctional officer. He moved from prison to prison — raising his own children on state property. DeSantis later appointed him to the top role in 2021.

Florida has the third-largest prison system in the nation, but its corrections officers are some of the lowest-paid. Dixon was known to advocate for higher pay during his tenure.

The prison system also has had its share of troubles over the years, including a 2020 U.S. Department of Justice report revealing the state failed to protect female inmates from sexual abuse.

On "Florida Matters Live & Local," Dixon describes some of the challenges facing the state's prison system, his hope for the future and more.

The interview below was edited for clarity and brevity.

You began your corrections journey back in 1996. You were a correctional officer. What brought you to the realization this was a career you really wanted to stick with?

I fell in love with the purpose early on.

My father worked in corrections and ended up retiring as a warden himself. I actually grew up living in state housing there on prison property, so I had a lot of exposure to it.

That exposure kind of led me down a path to where I didn't think it's anything I would ever do. I thought I'd get into some other profession, and then after a few years of doing odd jobs through college and after, I just decided that I would give it a shot.

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I actually thought I would go to work for corrections until I could finish my degree and do something else. But about a year or two in, I saw opportunity. Kind of like the military. If you work hard and move around a little bit, there's opportunity for career growth. Just fell in love with the people and the purpose.

Obviously the purpose kind of changed for me as I matured in the system over the years. But looking back, I don't have regrets at all. It's been a remarkable career, and it took me places that I never thought I would go and gave me opportunities to impact people's lives like I could have never imagined.

You said yourself that for every 200 new hires, 400 people were leaving a month. Where's the department at now, and how did you begin to take on that challenge that you kind of inherited as secretary when you took on the job?

We're at a pivotal point where we're stable, but we won't remain stable if we don't continue to invest in that department.

Kudos to Gov. DeSantis and all the things that he supported over my time as secretary and also to the legislature in large part. We had some good years, and I credit them for that.

But there's oftentimes a lack of understanding of the gravity of the resource — deprivation in many ways — and the resources that are needed to house that many men and women in our system.

I'm kind of in the tough-on-crime category myself. But I do know this: If you're going to be tough on crime, and you're going to lock people up, which we do in Florida, you've got to write the checks to provide the care and custody for them.

Oftentimes, we do one without the other. It's just a reality of prison systems here in Florida and throughout the nation that we have large numbers of individuals in our system, and sometimes there's a lack of recognition of the enormous cost it takes to provide care and custody in all sectors of prisons: food service, healthcare, security, certainly staffing.

I've seen staffing numbers deteriorate over the years to experiences I never thought I would see in terms of the number of staff to the number of inmates. It creates danger for not only the staff but for the inmate population as well.

You were all in favor of raising corrections officers' salaries during your time as secretary. Do you think staff pay is still an issue now?

I absolutely think staff pay is an issue. We've not kept up with competitive pay for correctional officers — and not just correctional officers, but civilian staff as well throughout our facilities.

From support staff to classification, maintenance, community corrections, so many areas. You get what you pay for, and you have to remain competitive, not just with other law enforcement competitors but other industry folks that are moving into our areas as well. That is the issue.

This is a money problem. In the past, it was frustrating because sometimes lawmakers would want to say, "Oh, it's leadership in certain areas." Certainly, we always have ... we can make improvements in leadership and things like that in places. But we've been so far off the mark in terms of competitive salary, and we still are.

I'm grateful for all that has occurred, but we should be paying a much higher salary right now to get the quality employees and to keep them. Not just to recruit, but to retain.

I'll give you an example: Alabama, of all places, on our Panhandle state line out there, they're at a much higher salary than we are. They're like $35 an hour after 18 months. We're sitting at, I think, around $27 or so. It's a considerable delta there between what our salary should be and what they are.

What do lawmakers still need to kind of open their ears to or sort of think about when it comes to putting more resources into the system?

It's not a lack of understanding. I think they get it. It's a fiscal and mathematical problem.

What works against the Department of Corrections is the number you shared at the beginning of the interview. We have 24,000 staff, so we can buy everyone a new uniform belt and spend several $100,000.

So if you extrapolate out, say $1, $2 or $3 an hour or whatever it may be for a pay raise for the Florida Department of Corrections compared with a smaller state agency, you're talking some of these state agencies with 2,000 or less employees. So when you multiply a significant pay increase times 24,000, you're in the not millions — but hundreds of millions of dollars sometimes in funding.

We compete with so many other state priorities, so it is a matter of really doing a good job of messaging.

To be hopefully, not overly optimistic, I do think the stage is set for advancement in the next few years. We had historic pay increases every year for the last 4, 5, 6 years — with the exception of this one. This one didn't go like we hoped it would. But I think it's safe to say over the next 2, 3, 4 years to have continuous significant growth in that area. I could be wrong. I can't predict the future.

What's your hope for the future of corrections in Florida?

We hope we provide the service that the title implies. We're supposed to correct behavior and rehabilitate and change lives.

And you can't do all of those things and protect the public and keep those that should never get out behind the fence. You can't do all those things to the full extent if you don't have the resources you need.

Florida Department of Corrections does not have a leadership problem. They have the best leaders in the nation. They have a resource problem.

So I hope everyone continues to understand that and to provide the resources they need to be successful.

This story was compiled from an interview conducted by Matthew Peddie for "Florida Matters Live & Local." You can listen to the entire program, including conversations about college classes behind bars bringing hope, here.