It’s refreshing to see some responsible government in Tallahassee for a change.

Despite pressure from party leaders, nine Republican senators broke ranks and voted with 12 Democrats to defeat a hasty and irresponsible proposal to privatize 27 state prisons in southern Florida.

The state’s $2.4 billion prison system — the nation’s third-largest, with 146 facilities and 27,000 employees – is in need of reform, better management and more transparency and accountability, as investigations by the U.S. Justice Department have repeatedly concluded.

But those needs don’t justify placing such a crucial part of law enforcement, a central part of government, in the hands of who knows who in the private sector.

While government may not be a perfect watchdog, it is ultimately accountable to one boss: the public. The private corporations seeking to run Florida’s prisons are accountable to their investors and their owners.

The issue doesn’t grab major, continuous news cycle headlines like the casino gambling debate. People seldom care about how well prisons are run — until one of their loved ones lands there.

And so it was easy for Republican sponsors to first try to sneak privatization last year into language in the 2011-12 budget, and after that failed, to speed a bill through two committees this session after some political maneuvering to remove an opposing legislator.

When the bill came to the Senate floor, supporters, led by Sen. J.D. Alexander, R-Lake Wales, argued that for-profit prisons would save tax dollars and increase efficiency, and they criticized the Department of Corrections’ unwillingness to modernize. They used as a prop $30 million in savings, although they provided neither definitive nor independent proof of how corporations would achieve that feat.

But regardless, savings and efficiency are hardly the kinds of issues that should be driving the conversation about a function of government — incarceration and the delivery of justice — that is crucial to the founding values of this nation.

This drastic move to privatize a sector of our justice system — one that would have been the largest expansion of prison privatization in U.S. history — deserved more thoughtful treatment.

Every state prison south of Orlando would have been privatized, just like that, with the simple, quick passage of a bill that, although narrowly, was wisely defeated in a welcome show of bipartisanship. (Unfortunately, that only included one Republican from South Florida, Miguel Diaz de la Portilla of Miami).

“I’m scared about the whole idea of private companies being responsible for taking away someone’s freedom and keeping them there,” said Sen. Steve Oelrich, R-Alachua, speaking on the Senate floor. “No sooner should we privatize our military than we should be privatizing our corrections department and our correctional officers. I think it’s bad policy.”

He’s right, and we should be scared too. As with most proposals encouraged by the campaign funds and endorsements of special interests, this hobbyhorse of Republican legislators and the governor promises a comeback next year.