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 […]
Other News
In this section you'll find recent developments and news stories that are relevant to our work.
Arizona death row inmates die from hepatitis C, not lethal injection From KHOU
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 […]
Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2018 From the Prison Policy Initiative
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 […]
Prisoner Rights Advocates Rally Against Visitation Cutbacks In Florida Prisons From WUFT
They arrived in street-parked caravans carrying stark white banners and neon signs with slogans like, “Invest in people, not in prisons.” Several of them donned black-and-white striped prisoners costumes as they gathered to the screech of the megaphone and the beat of a snare drum. Around 50 protesters were barred from the building by police tape. […]
More Prison Inmates Get Access to Hepatitis-C Drugs From the Wall Street Journal
Massachusetts state prison officials agreed to expand treatment for inmates with hepatitis C, in the first settlement among several class-action lawsuits accusing state prison systems of denying many prisoners access to costly drugs. Drugmakers including Gilead Sciences Inc., AbbVie Inc. and Merck & Co. since 2013 have . . . Read the full article.
Visitation cut at Florida state prisons. Agency cites staff shortages, safety concerns From the Miami Herald
Citing severe staff shortages and safety concerns, Florida has taken the drastic step of curtailing visitation at all 50 state prisons. The smuggling of cellphones, weapons and drugs continues unabated throughout the state, leading to turmoil that has threatened the safety of corrections officers, staff and inmates, officials said. But one state lawmaker said the […]
Florida is afraid of its prison system. Here’s what lawmakers want to do about it. From the Miami Herald
Lobbyist Barney Bishop stood up before a Senate committee Wednesday and wrote the direct mail campaign ad every legislator fears. “You’re helping drug traffickers,” he said of the bill before the Senate Justice Appropriations Subcommittee that will give judges discretion when sentencing non-violent drug offenders to prison. “Do you know how much pot you’ve got […]
Inmates denied costly hepatitis C cure, suit says From the Sacramento Bee
California prison inmates with hepatitis C are being denied curative treatment that relies on expensive new drugs, according to a class action lawsuit filed this week in federal court in Sacramento. The lawsuit was filed Tuesday by Sacramento attorneys Mark E. Merin and Fred J. Hiestand. The 18 prisoners named as plaintiffs all have hepatitis […]
Saturday’s Editorial: Too many mentally ill inmates in Florida prisons are being mistreated From the Florida Times-Union
If Danny Geiger were still alive, his mother believes he would be pleased with a settlement agreement filed this week by the state to improve mental health care within its prison system. But Geiger, a mentally ill man who hailed from Orange Park, died in 2016 after being abused by the prison system that had […]
Opinion: End harmful solitary confinement of children From the Tallahassee Democrat
Cautia Spencer was 13 years old when she picked up a checkbook she found alongside the road. At lunchtime, she attempted to buy a slice of pizza from the school cafeteria with one of the blank checks she had discovered. Cautia was placed in the custody of the Department of Juvenile Justice, but after disobeying rules […]
