Florida could reach a grim milestone by the end of the year: more than 100,000 men and women behind bars.

There are 99, 586 inmates in Florida prisons today and the corrections secretary expects to top 100-thousand by the time the calendar rolls over to 2009.

There are already military-style tents erected to house overflow inmates at nine state prisons, though DOC Spokeswoman Gretl Plesinger says no inmates are living in them yet.

The Liberty County work camp has three of those tents, Plesinger says.

Florida Corrections Secretary Walt McNeil is asking lawmakers to set aside money to build 19 new prisons in the next five years or make a bigger investment in substance abuse counseling and job training for inmates so they don't commit more crimes once they're released.

"The national average is that one in every 100 Americans are in some type of incarceration, be it prison or jail. I think that's a statement about where we are a as nation with respect to the growing number of citizens and people in our country who are involved in criminal enterprise and we've got to do something about it," McNeil said.

McNeil says the recidivism rate right now hovers around 32 percent and he hopes more re-entry programs can reduce that to closer to 20% because, he says, Florida cannot afford to build its way out of this problem.