A series of recent fires in at least five detention centers around the country has raised questions about living conditions in Turkey's prison system.
Nearly one of every 10 state prisoners is sexually victimized during confinement, according to a Justice Department study released Thursday.
For the last decade, Carolyn LeCroy has been helping children stay connected to their incarcerated parents through video messages.
Holly Robinson Peete spends a day with 2008 CNN Hero Carolyn LeCroy, who helps inmates send messages to their kids.
Pushpa Basnet doesn't need an alarm clock. Every morning, the sounds of 40 children wake her up in the two-story home she shares with them.
Pushpa Basnet started a children's center in Nepal to help care for children of incarcerated parents.
How does injustice influence America's identity? Public interest lawyer Bryan Stevenson explains.
I'm an attorney and I represent incarcerated people, both in my home state of Alabama and across the United States.
In central Honduras, more than 300 inmates burned or suffocated to death in a prison. One can only imagine the cries of those trapped in their cells, while no one could find a key to let them escape the flames. We can only try to comprehend the agony of the prisoners' parents, children, relatives or friends as they saw the images on television, wondering whether their loved ones survived or, if they died, how much they suffered in their final moments.
The number of aging men and women in U.S. prisons is growing rapidly, Human Rights Watch said Friday, and it expressed concern for their care behind bars.
A prison guard was fatally stabbed Friday afternoon in eastern Arkansas by an inmate already serving a life sentence for first-degree murder.
California officials are investigating why correctional officers fired seven lethal rounds to quell a prison riot in Sacramento this week in which one inmate was shot in the leg, authorities said.
In the latest case of government belt-tightening, a Southern California county is charging prisoners for the daily cost of their stay.
Taxpayers could be bankrolling a kidney transplant for wealthy white-collar convict Raj Rajaratnam, who was recently sentenced to 11 years in federal prison for insider trading.
A three-week hunger strike by some California prison inmates has ended, the Department of Corrections said Thursday.
Thousands of California state prisoners, angry about what they call harsh treatment, have been on a hunger strike that enters its ninth day Tuesday.
Rapper T.I. walked out of a federal prison Thursday to return to an Atlanta halfway house where he will spend the last 14 days of an 11-month prison sentence for a parole violation, his lawyer said Thursday.
Rapper T.I.'s furlough from prison was cut short last week because prison officials objected to his manager and a reality TV producer riding with him on a trip to a halfway house, according to a prison document.
Over the last three years, the number of contraband cell phones seized in federal prisons and minimum-security facilities has quadrupled, according to a report issued by the General Accountability Office.
T.I., who walked out of a federal prison in Arkansas Wednesday and joyously tweeted "The storm is over & da sun back out," woke up back in a prison Friday morning.
Rapper T.I. has been removed from a halfway house to a "different facility" a day after he was furloughed, apparently because of prison officials' objection over his using a tour bus to move between facilities in Arkansas and Georgia, his attorney said.
Vice looks at Norway's progressive prison system as the fate of terror suspect Anders Breivik remains to be seen.
With a stroke of his pen last Thursday, Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed California's budget. Legislators, he said, had failed to take the "strong medicine" California needs to survive. But the state could easily save hundreds of millions of dollars by fixing its criminal justice system.
Experts testify that prisoners in US facilities have been radicalized and subsequently committed terrorist acts.
The danger of Islamic radicalization inside U.S. prisons "remains real and present," said Rep. Peter King of New York, the Republican chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. But during a Wednesday hearing on the subject, others said there are only a few cases in which prison radicalization has been linked to terrorism.
California wants to shift low-level state offenders to county jails as a way to reduce overcrowding, as ordered by the U.S. Supreme Court, under an unfunded plan that would require legislative and voter approval, the state's top corrections official said Tuesday.
Hasn't California suffered enough?
California officials said Tuesday they won't arbitrarily free 33,000 inmates and they will submit plans to the federal courts in two weeks specifying ways to remedy prison overcrowding under a U.S. Supreme Court order this week.
The Supreme Court has affirmed a federal order telling California to reduce its overflowing prison population, a situation the majority said "falls below the standard of decency."
Former Enron executive Andrew Fastow has been transferred from prison to a halfway house, the last stage of incarceration before his scheduled release later this year, according to the federal Bureau of Prisons.
One hour of recreation a day. Veal patties and noodles for dinner. New York's well-known Rikers Island jail complex has been featured in films, television shows and documentaries, but life on the other side of the bars appears less than glamorous.
A former corrections official explains what it's like for Dominique Strauss-Kahn to live inside Rikers Island jail.
Born behind bars
updated: Thu May 05 2011 06:15:00
In South Africa, female inmates can raise their babies behind bars.
In one Johannesburg prison there are 27 toddlers locked behind bars. The only crime they're guilty of is being born to a mother who broke the law and was jailed.
There is a bipartisan tide of lawmakers who are trying to fix our nation's out-of-control corrections system, and make funding for education the priority.
Army Pfc. Bradley Manning has been imprisoned in the Quantico Marine Corps Brig for nine months, suspected of giving highly classified State Department cables to the website WikiLeaks. He has not been tried, yet is kept in solitary confinement in a windowless room 23 hours a day and forced to sleep naked without pillows or blankets.
CNN's Chris Lawrence reports on new info that the Army deployed Pvt. Bradley Manning despite concerns.
Few doubt the prison conditions across California are disturbing and long-standing:
The weak economy and dwindling stimulus funds are behind a rare drop in spending on prisons in many U.S. states, according to a study released Friday.
Federal prison officials fail to properly keep track of thousands of inmates who are granted unescorted furloughs when they are temporarily released, an investigation by the Justice Department's inspector general has concluded.
Early this month, three convicted murderers escaped from a prison in Kingman, a small town along Route 66 in northwest Arizona. According to reports, the inmates had broken free from the facility by using a pair of wire cutters. They'd escaped from a medium-security facility operated by Utah-based Management & Training Corp, a private corrections company.
The escape of three convicts from a prison in Arizona last week has become an issue in the state's campaign for governor.
Hoping to stop federal inmates from directing crimes from behind bars, President Barack Obama signed into law Tuesday a prohibition on cell phone use by prisoners.
More than 1,200 prison inmates, including 241 serving life sentences, defrauded the government of $9.1 million in tax credits reserved for first-time homebuyers, according to a Treasury Department report released Wednesday.
TruTV's Jean Casarez spots Joran Van der Sloot leaving his cell and gives us an exclusive look inside.
Prisons in Washington state are going "green." CNN's Patrick Oppmann reports how they offer inmates new opportunities.
The organic vegetables travel a short distance from the well-tended garden to the table where they are eaten.
Ten years ago, teen Daniel Giddings shot a man during an attempted robbery and was sentenced to six to 12 years in prison.
An Azerbaijani jail has been hailed for its work treating TB among its inmates.
For the first time since 1972, the number of state prisoners in the United States has dropped, albeit only slightly, the Pew Center on the States reported Wednesday in a survey.
Washington Wizards guard Gilbert Arenas pleaded guilty Friday to a felony for carrying an unlicensed pistol outside a home or business. Prosecutors recommend that he should serve no more than six months in jail. D.C. Superior Court Judge Robert E. Morin, however, will decide whether and how long Arenas will spend time behind bars. Arenas is scheduled to be sentenced March 26.
More doctors are dropping their private practices, choosing to go to work behind bars treating murderers, rapists and other hardened criminals.
Convicted swindler Bernard Madoff is being treated for "issues relating to dizziness and hypertension" at the medical facility of the prison where he is incarcerated, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
Three Iranian prison officials have been charged with murder after three imprisoned protesters were beaten to death in the aftermath of the country's disputed presidential election, Iranian media reported Saturday.
Use of capital punishment by states continues its steady decline, with fewer death sentences handed down in 2009 than any year since the death penalty was reinstated by the Supreme Court in 1976.
The thought of her convicted attacker getting out of prison early makes Gloria Warner feel sick.
Some terrorism suspects held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, will be moved to an Illinois prison that the federal government will buy to hold them, the Obama administration announced Tuesday.
A federal appeals court on Wednesday granted Ohio's request to resume scheduled executions next month when the state will use a new, untested one-drug method of lethal injection.
Federal officials toured an Illinois prison that could one day house Guantanamo detainees. CNN's Elaine Quijano reports.
A proposal to house federal prisoners, including some detainees from Guantanamo Bay, in a largely vacant maximum-security prison would be an economic boost to struggling northern Illinois, state officials said Sunday.
A prison in northern Illinois is the leading contender to house some detainees transferred from the federal facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, two Obama administration officials told CNN Saturday.
White fuzz covers his bald head. His sallow skin sags. A wheelchair and cane support limp legs.
A Florida deputy was nearly killed in a jail house attack that was caught on tape. WFTS' Don Germais reports.
Hillsborough County, Florida, Deputy Kenneth Moon was alone at his station at a county jail facility near Tampa when an inmate attacked him with no warning.
Wrongly accused?updated: Tue Oct 27 2009 14:24:00
A Chicago man accused of rape was sent to jail as he swore his innocence. Did his fiancee stand by his story too?
In his darkest moment, Kenneth Brown lost it all. His wife and kids, the housebroken dog, the vacation home on Cape Cod all vanished when he was sent to prison for an arson in 1996.
Lethal assaults on police and prison guards in Guatemala continued over the weekend, with an attack on a national police patrol that killed two officers and left one wounded, authorities said.
Preview a documentary about inmates that are learning to meditate.
In his darkest moment, Kenneth Brown lost it all. His wife and kids, the housebroken dog, the vacation home on Cape Cod all vanished when he was sent to prison for an arson in 1996.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear an appeal from a female death row inmate who said fetal alcohol syndrome should have been considered by the state court that reviewed her sentence.
Some Florida minimum-security inmates want to know: Can you handle the heat?
CNN's John Zarrella reports on a jailhouse-produced hot sauce.
More than 100 federal corrections officials admit engaging in illegal sexual contact with inmates, and more than two dozen of them smuggled in weapons, drugs and more to cover up their misconduct, an investigation has found.
Death row inmates in Japan spend decades in isolation and face inhuman conditions that can lead to mental illness, Amnesty International said Thursday.
Thirty minutes on a dark December night in 1996 left R. Dwayne Betts irrevocably changed.
To hear some Guatemalans tell it, three coordinated attacks that killed four prison officials in five hours Monday hardly raised anyone's pulse.
As Michigan's economy worsened last year, Michael Hester decided it was time to leave the private sector to work in the prison system, figuring a state job as a corrections officer would be more stable.
Congestion in Zimbabwe's prisons is set to ease a bit after President Robert Mugabe acceded to pleas by prison authorities to pardon more than 1,500 prisoners.
California legislators plan to keep trying to find consensus on a controversial proposal that would release at least 27,000 inmates from state prisons.
Authorities regained control of a Kentucky prison early Saturday after inmates torched buildings, shattered windows and threw rocks at guards.
A controversial bill that California legislators say would allow the early release of more than 27,000 inmates from crowded prisons will be taken up by the state Assembly on Monday.
More than 250 inmates were injured in a riot that erupted overnight at the California Institution for Men in Chino, a spokesman said Sunday.
The president she once pointed a gun at has been dead for nearly three years, and her longtime idol and leader, Charles Manson, remains in prison.
Bernard Madoff, the convicted Ponzi mastermind, was transferred to a federal prison in Butner, N.C. on Tuesday, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
Bernard Madoff, mastermind behind the largest Ponzi scheme in history, has decided not to appeal his 150-year sentence, according to his lawyer.
When Ponzi scheme mastermind Bernard Madoff is sentenced on Monday, he'll be sent to a real prison with real bars and violent offenders, not a "country club" for white collar crooks, consultants say.
More than 100 police officers and others were searching Friday in a southeastern Louisiana parish for a murder suspect who escaped from jail with three other inmates, a law enforcement official said.
If there's anything Oprah Winfrey knows for sure, it's what the love of a dog can do for your life. "There is nothing in the world like puppy love," Oprah says.
Michigan officials said Friday that the state is closing three prisons and five prison camps in hopes of narrowing a $1.4 billion budget gap for fiscal 2010.
In the black market of prison life, cell phones have become perhaps the hottest commodity. Now, Texas is among a growing number of state governments going after them.
A former death row inmate in Tennessee has been cleared of murder. WATE's Hana Kim reports.
"Get yourself together." Mary Williams repeated those three words often to her 28-year-old daughter, who served three years in a Kansas prison for a 1988 armed robbery.
If one California lawmaker has his way, his cash-strapped state may have an arresting real estate listing on the market: San Quentin State Prison.
A lawmaker has introduced legislation that would sell the famous San Quentin prison to developers. CNN's Dan Simon reports.
Mumia Abu-Jamal sits on Pennsylvania's death row, perhaps the most recognized of the 228 condemned inmates at the Greene Correctional Facility, an hour south of Pittsburgh.
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson signed a bill Wednesday repealing the death penalty in his state, his office confirmed.
The next big question about convicted scammer Bernard Madoff, who has been ensconced in his $7 million home for the past several months, is where he'll likely spend the rest of his life.
A record number of Americans served time in corrections systems across the country in 2007, according to a report released Monday by the Pew Center on the States.
San Quentin Prison sits like a fortress along the bay just north of San Francisco. It is bordered by some of the most expensive residential real estate in the country. But at the edge of this scenic peninsula, 5,400 inmates are locked up.
© 2013 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
|