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How do you stop a person who served their prison time from going right back in? As Matt Galka tells us, justice advocates will tackle that question this week, but some say they’re not addressing an issue that could be a big help.

More than 100,000 inmates call Florida prisons home. A coalition of lawmakers and think tanks will try to figure out ways to make sure their stay doesn’t become routine.

“Our packed agenda is focused on rethinking the way we deal with non-violent criminal offenders in the state of Florida,” said Barney Bishop with the Smart Justice Alliance.

The Smart Justice Alliance’s annual summit will try to cut into recidivism.  More than 14,000 prisoners a year are repeat offenders. Senate Criminal Justice committee chairman Greg Evers says it starts with education.

“Most of the inmates that we have have an average of a 6^th grade education. How can you expect them to get a job, become a productive part of society, if we don’t do it smartly,” said Evers (R-Pensacola).

Civil rights advocates say the summit is missing an opportunity.

Ex-offenders show up at the Capitol four times a year trying to get their voting rights back after a 5 year waiting period. Civil Rights lawyer Mark Schlakman says restoring rights has helped keep former inmates from going back in.

“Employment opportunities and education opportunities are extremely important, but, so too are the restoration of civil rights,” he said.

An average of about 1 in 3 inmates released end up going back, but the number drops to 1 in 9 if civil rights are restored.  Those numbers have prompted petitions for a ballot initiative for automatic restoration of civil rights for the 2016 election.

The Smart Justice Alliance says they’ll wait for that to formulate before addressing it.

Florida spends more than $2 billion dollars housing inmates. The Smart Justice Alliance hopes that if policies can drive inmate population down, spending would go down as well.