Press Coverage

The Florida Department of Corrections is facing a potential class action over recently forcing inmates to forfeit millions of dollars worth of mp3 and other multimedia files purchased under a since-axed media player contract. William Demler, a 74-year-old incarcerated man at South Florida Reception Center is the lead plaintiff in the case, which was filed […]

INMATES AND THEIR advocates are pushing for legal and political fixes to fight hepatitis C, a public health problem experts say can’t be solved in the U.S. overall without first tackling it within prison walls. The hepatitis C virus attacks the liver and can turn deadly: Research shows it was associated with more fatalities in 2013 than 60 […]

For more than 40 years, Randall Berg fought for the rights of the downtrodden, disabled, disenfranchised and even the despised. As founder and executive director of the Florida Justice Institute, the soft-spoken 70-year-old Miami attorney battled powerful landowners and intransigent state agencies — most notably the Florida Department of Corrections — to right wrongs suffered by people who society often […]

Once costly drugs were produced to cure hepatitis C, the state Corrections Department dragged its feet on treatment with direct-acting antiviral drugs, which are effective 95 percent of the time. The Florida Justice Institute sued on behalf of as many as 20,000 inmates, and U.S. District Judge Mark E. Walker quickly responded. The lawsuit was filed […]

Anthony Vidal was sentenced to 15 years in prison — not to death — for a non-violent robbery in 2006. But he died by the actions of the Florida Department of Corrections anyway, alleges a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the Florida Justice Institute against the department in Miami-Dade circuit court Tuesday morning. Vidal was […]

The morning of April 17, Wilbur Cauley left all of his belongings in their usual place: stacked by a fence under the I-395 overpass at NW First Court and 13th Street. It was in the middle of a four-block area where about 30 homeless Miamians live. That morning, Cauley, an Army veteran in his late […]

By Ted Alcorn March 15, 2018 Any national campaign to eliminate hepatitis C, an insidious virus that kills tens of thousands of Americans a year, would almost certainly involve prisons. One in seven state inmates are believed to be infected, and the regimented environment of a prison has its advantages when it comes to screening and treatment. […]

Yet another bungle by the state’s Department of Corrections may cost taxpayers millions of dollars this year.  Florida is being forced to pay attention to a problem it’s been ignoring for years. This time it’ll be a big “oops” for a dysfunctional state department that’s been called on the carpet for years for its treatment […]

Pascual Diaz-Plasencia was arrested on misdemeanor drug possession charges June 29, 2012, after police caught him with less than 20 grams of marijuana. Diaz-Plasencia had recently undergone a kidney transplant and had to take a set of pills twice daily to ensure his body didn’t reject the organ. But after cops picked him up for harmless pot possession, […]

A recent federal court order in Florida may foreshadow a local judicial decision on whether thousands of Tennessee inmates affected by the state’s hepatitis C epidemic will receive medication that could save their lives. U.S. District Judge Mark Walker ruled Nov. 17 that the Florida Department of Corrections failed to meet constitutional requirements of treating inmates suffering […]