TALLAHASSEE -- The real-life impact of Gov. Rick Scott’s proposed budget cuts is hitting home as the state targets seven prisons for extinction, including all-women lockups in Broward and Hillsborough counties.

The prison closings threaten to put up to 1,300 state employees out of work, wreak havoc on rural areas where prisons are economic powerhouses, and force inmates’ families to drive greater distances to visit loved ones at a time when gas prices are again climbing.

Also targeted for elimination are prison work camps in Gadsden, Hendry, Levy and Washington counties in addition to prisons in Alachua, Bradford, Indian River, Jefferson and Polk counties.

Legislators immediately began scrambling to find ways to stop the closings, but Scott’s prisons chief, Corrections Secretary Ken Tucker, said a declining crime rate and surplus of empty prison beds makes the action necessary and that some prisons would begin being phased out as early as next month.

“There was no way to avoid this,” Tucker said. “Every year, we see less people coming into prison.”

A Scott priority is to create private-sector jobs while shrinking government. His budget proposal to the Legislature includes eliminating 4,500 more state jobs, a part of which is $64 million in savings from “prison consolidation.”

The state houses about 100,000 inmates and has 112,000 beds, with an estimated 4,000 beds still under construction that were approved years ago.

“That excess capacity, no one can justify,” Tucker said.

Tucker said the Department of Corrections will offer jobs to displaced workers at nearby prisons or other state agencies wherever possible.

The state used a numerical rating system to score every prison based on nine factors, such as per-inmate cost, operating overhead, distance to other prisons, and community impact.

The only South Florida prison targeted for closure is Broward Correctional Institution in Pembroke Pines, with 624 inmates and 270 employees. It has been in operation since 1977.

Ryann Greenberg, who lives in the Laguna Isles development of Pembroke Pines less than one mile from the women’s prison, said she is delighted the facility will be closing.

Greenberg, a mother of two children, said she hopes the prison’s closure will lead to a reconsideration of the federal immigration detention center planned for the area.

"This is a positive movement toward moving away from prisons in west Broward,’’ Greenberg said, noting that in addition to the women’s prison and the federal detention center, a third parcel in the neighborhood has long been zoned for a future county jail.

Greenberg founded an opposition group to the federal detention center last year after learning of plans by the neighboring municipality of Southwest Ranches to bring the federal detention center to the area.

The group has a website — noprisonswr.org — and has organized protests against the detention center, which they claim will hurt property values and jeopardize the safety of residents and school children.

“This could actually be a turning point,’’ she said, “to turn around the area to make it comparable to Weston, which it is if these prisons weren’t here.’’

Hillsborough scored dead last with 22 points, making it especially vulnerable.

But despite its small size and high operating costs, the Riverview prison has many devoted followers who rave about its success at using faith and character programs to improve the lives of women inmates.

“We have to convince the governor that DOC is making another mistake,” said Nancy Williams, a prison volunteer and retiree in nearby Sun City Center. Williams lobbied to prevent Hillsborough’s shutdown last spring.

Florida Democratic Party chairman Rod Smith blistered Scott for the closings, saying it was part of “his extreme Tea Party agenda that has eliminated jobs and moved our state in the wrong direction.”

Times staff writer Sarah Whitman contributed to this report. Steve Bousquet can be reached at bousquet@tampabay.com or (850) 224-7263.