The state is facing lawsuits alleging that its prisons subject too many inmates, including the mentally ill, to a prisoner "warehousing" culture of unlawfully extreme isolation and deprivation, usually with little or no rehabilitation efforts to prevent recidivism.

Other suits decry what one calls excessive as well as "malicious and sadistic" use of pepper spray and other chemicals to keep mentally ill prisoners under control. In many cases the sprays have burned off inmates' skin, according to the suit.

Florida has the third largest prison population in the nation -- 92,000.

It's time for a different strategy. It's called rehabilitation and preventing recidvism.

Over the past two decades, Florida has in many ways led a national get-tough-on-crime wave that has reduced some crime rates but has also given the U.S. the world's highest incarceration rate. Bush had championed the often rough boot camps for juvenile delinquents; but after Anderson's death, Florida's conservative legislature voted to abolish them.

And it's beginning to listen to McDonough's argument that lowering recidivism will save the state the hundreds of millions of dollars it's spending these days on new prisons.

It's way past time to get past being tough on crime and begin being smart on crime. Florida isn't the only state in prison crisis mode. Check out this New York Times article today about Connecticut, which I'll be writing about shortly. And of course, there's California.

America. Prison nation.