Prison

Laboratory Theater of Florida is mounting a production of playwright Lynn Nottage’s comedic play “Clyde’s.” Nottage is the first and only woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama twice. We explore the play in a conversation with the production’s director Tijuana Clemons, actor Sonya McCarter, and Lab Theater founding artistic director Annette Trossbach.

The shooting death of Kristopher Smith as he sat in his car after dropping off his son at school in January 2013 eventually lead to charges against Robert Lee Ward and his sentencing to life in prison.

Craig Ridley’s killing was just one of a record 481 deaths in Florida prisons in 2017, marking an upward trend that has now spanned more than two decades. In December 2021, the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) released a report showing the number of homicides in state and federal institutions in 2019 was almost quadruple that of 2001, when the bureau began collecting data about mortality in the nation’s prisons. In fact, 2019 saw the highest number of homicides ever recorded by the bureau, and prisoners were nearly three times more likely to die by homicide than other U.S. residents.

An exhibition titled “Prison Nation,” is now at the Baker Museum at Artis-Naples. Through photography, the exhibition creates a visual record of the national crisis of mass incarceration. We talk with the exhibition’s co-curator Nicole Fleetwood, Ph.D., who will deliver a lecture about the exhibition Aug. 31 at the Baker Museum.

A Cape Coral mother and daughter will each serve prison sentences in a fraud case involving more than $500,000 and a senior citizen for whom they were hired as caretakers.

Nearly a month into a stifling heat wave, corrections officials are attempting to alleviate sweltering conditions in Florida’s unairconditioned prisons, but advocates for inmates say the efforts fall short and aren’t being carried out the same way at all facilities.Throughout July, inmates’ supporters pressed the Department of Corrections to take steps to offer some relief to the roughly 85,000 people locked up in prisons.

Charles Manson follower Leslie Van Houten, a former homecoming princess who at 19 helped carry out the shocking killings of a wealthy Los Angeles couple at the direction of the violent and manipulative cult leader, walked out of a California prison Tuesday after serving more than 50 years of a life sentence. Van Houten, now 73, “was released to parole supervision,” the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said in a statement.

As Florida Prison Poet Laureate, Christopher Malec serves as the voice from behind prison walls.

Putting safety measures in place to try to prevent the spread of COVID-19, the Florida Department of Corrections plans to resume allowing visitors at...

State health officials reported 2,974 new cases of COVID-19, Sunday, pushing Florida over the 600,000-case threshold, with 600,571 confirmed cases since the start of the pandemic.The Florida Department of Health also reported 51 new coronavirus-related deaths, Sunday, bringing the statewide death toll to 10,462 fatalities.On Saturday, state health officials reported 4,300 new cases and 106 deaths.