Other News

For the first time in Florida history, voters will decide whether to grant the right to vote to an estimated 1.5 million convicted felons. Secretary of State Ken Detzner announced Tuesday that the proposal gained the required 766,000 valid signatures to get on the November ballot. The state elections website showed 799,278 valid signatures. It […]

More inmates died in Florida prisons last year than in any other year on record, leaving the state scrambling to identify causes and find solutions. The tally, 428 inmate deaths in 2017, was released late Friday by the Florida Department of Corrections and showed a 20 percent increase over previous years. The inmates who died […]

When a series of disturbances and insurrections erupted across state prisons nationwide in 2016 on the anniversary of New York’s 1971 Attica prison riots, the Florida Department of Corrections (FDOC) danced around acknowledging whether a set of incidents that had occurred in the Sunshine State were related to the nationwide movement. They were. But after Florida […]

In the eight years since its publication, “The New Jim Crow,” a book by Michelle Alexander that explores the phenomenon of mass incarceration, has sold well over a million copies, been compared to the work of W.E.B. Du Bois, been cited in the legal decisions to end stop-and-frisk and sentencing laws, and been quoted passionately on stage at the Academy […]

Lake Butler Work Camp, Fla., Jan. 16 — There is one place in the U.S. where slavery is still constitutionally legal: in prisons. The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, passed in 1864, abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. But prisoners held in this enslavement are organizing resistance. Brave prisoners […]

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WCTV) — Protesters gathered at the Florida Department of Corrections headquarters on Calhoun Street in downtown Tallahassee. The protests were held Tuesday in support of prisoners’ rights. WCTV’s Alicia Turner was on the scene. Alicia reported that one person was arrested and a window was broken at the building. Read the full article.

Prisoners in Florida are planning to go on strike on Martin Luther King Jr. Day to protest “prison slavery” and “deplorable conditions within FL prisons.” In a campaign nicknamed “Operation PUSH”, organizers say inmates are expected to protest at the Reception and Medical Center state prison and hospital for men in Lake Butler, Florida. Several rallies in […]

FLORIDA PRISONERS ARE calling for a general strike to start this week — marking the third mass action over the course of a year in protest of inhumane conditions in the state’s detention facilities. Detainees in at least eight prisons have declared their intention to stop all work on Monday — Martin Luther King Jr. Day — to demand an […]

Inmates across eight Florida prisons have announced a protest in the form of a work stoppage dubbed Operation PUSH set to start on Jan. 15, advocates say. “Every institution must prepare to lay down for at least one month or longer: No prisoners will go to their job assignments,” prisoners said in a lengthy statement, compiled from […]

In a corner of her house in Sparta in southwest Missouri, Jymie Jimerson has set up a kind of shrine. It has Native American art representing her Cherokee heritage alongside Willie Nelson albums, books and photos in remembrance of her late husband. On one side is a copy of Willie’s mid-’70s LP, “Red Headed Stranger.” […]