Our Impact
Court Enters Preliminary Injunction Requiring Evaluation and Treatment of Prisoners with Hepatitis C (12/13/2017) - Judge Mark Walker of the Northern District of Florida has entered a Preliminary Injunction requiring the Florida Department of Corrections to evaluate and treat prisoners with Hepatitis C with life-saving medications called direct-acting antiviral drugs. The Order also imposes deadlines for those evaluations and the initiation of treatment. The Court had previously granted Plaintiffs' Motion ... Continue Reading
Florida Justice Institute and Freidin Brown Reach $730,000 Settlement with Miami-Dade County for Man Who Suffered Kidney Failure Because of Deficient Jail Medical Care (12/13/2017) - The Florida Justice Institute, Inc. (FJI) and the law firm Freidin Brown, P.A., have reached a settlement with Miami-Dade County and the Public Health Trust (PHT) for $730,000, resolving claims that deficiencies in the Miami-Dade Jail’s medical system caused an incarcerated man to suffer kidney failure and eventual loss of his kidney. The Plaintiff, Pascual ... Continue Reading
Court Orders Treatment for Incarcerated People with Hepatitis C, Granting Preliminary Injunction Motion Court Also Grants Class Certification to Class of Florida Prisoners With Hepatitis C (11/19/2017) - In a 32 page order, U.S. District Court Judge Mark Walker in Tallahassee granted Plaintiffs' Motion for Preliminary Injunction and ordered the Florida Department of Corrections (FDC) to submit a plan to treat incarcerated people with Hepatitis C, with Direct-Acting Antiviral (DAA) medications. The Court noted “that Defendant must move with ‘alacrity.’ This Court will ... Continue Reading
Latest News
Florida prisons see visitation upheaval as corrections officials cite contraband crisis From the Florida Times-Union (3/28/2018) - After a ramp up of enforcement that led to thousands of prisoner visitor strip searches beginning last summer, the Florida Department of Corrections will cut visitation days in half, saying it can’t safely facilitate the process. Since July, Florida corrections officials have implemented a contraband crackdown that has weighed heavily on inmates’ girlfriends, wives and ... Continue Reading
Arizona death row inmates die from hepatitis C, not lethal injection From KHOU (3/21/2018) - PHOENIX — Since executions were put on hold by a federal judge in 2014, five Arizona death-row inmates have died of “natural causes.” All of them were related to hepatitis C infections, according to attorneys and relatives of the dead prisoners. The medical director at the Arizona prison complex that until last year housed the majority of death ... Continue Reading
Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2018 From the Prison Policy Initiative (3/15/2018) - By Peter Wagner and Wendy Sawyer March 14, 2018 Press release Can it really be true that most people in jail are being held before trial? And how much of mass incarceration is a result of the war on drugs? These questions are harder to answer than you might think, because our country’s systems of confinement are so ... Continue Reading
