OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Oklahoma Department of Corrections Director Scott Crow, who helped oversee the state's return to carrying out the death penalty after a nearly seven-year hiatus, announced Monday he's stepping down.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said Friday he plans to hold an oversight hearing on the crisis-plagued federal Bureau of Prisons after The Associated Press reported that the agency is keeping its embattled ex-director on the payroll as an adviser to his successor.
SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — The white man who fatally shot Ahmaud Arbery after chasing the running Black man in a Georgia neighborhood says he fears he will be killed by fellow inmates if he's sent to a state prison to serve a life sentence for murder.
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Whether South Carolina can start executing prisoners again either with a firing squad or electric chair is now in the hands of a judge after a trial over whether shooting or electrocuting inmates is cruel and unusual punishment banned by the U.S.
Federal prosecutors are recommending an eight-year prison sentence for an off-duty Virginia police officer who was convicted by a jury of storming the U.S.
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Albert Woodfox, a former inmate who spent decades in isolation at a Louisiana prison and then became an advocate for prison reforms after he was released, died Thursday of complications from COVID-19, his family said.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The federal Bureau of Prisons is keeping its former director on the payroll as an adviser to his successor, rewarding him with an influential new role after concerns about his leadership — including from staff, inmates, Congress and the Biden administration — hastened his exit from the top job.
SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — An appellate court has reversed the murder convictions of the three Northern California deputies convicted in the 2015 jail beating death of a mentally ill inmate after a judge ruled that the primary legal theory prosecutors cited was invalidated by recent changes in state law.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Attorney General Merrick Garland swore in the new director of the federal Bureau of Prisons Tuesday as the Biden administration looks to reform the beleaguered agency.
Colette Peters was sworn in at the agency’s headquarters in Washington.
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — New York authorities have lifted a ban that had stopped state prison inmates from reading a book about the 1971 Attica Correctional Facility uprising following a First Amendment lawsuit brought by its author.
HOLDENVILLE, Okla. (AP) — A corrections officer has died after being attacked by an inmate at an Oklahoma prison, officials said on Monday.
The attack on officer Alan Jay Hershberger happened Sunday at the Davis Correctional Facility, which is a privately run prison in Holdenville about 70 miles (115 kilometers) southeast of Oklahoma City.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A Texas man convicted of storming the U.S. Capitol with a holstered handgun, helmet and body armor was sentenced Monday to more than seven years in prison, the longest sentence imposed so far among hundreds of Capitol riot cases.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California prison officials said Monday that they are investigating the third slaying of an inmate by other inmates within the span of a week, at three different prisons.
The latest was Friday at Pelican Bay State Prison far northwestern California, where officials say Fernando Torres Lopez attacked fellow inmate Uriel Otero in a dayroom.
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — A South Carolina inmate who killed four people in two states is off death row after a federal appeals court ruled the judge who sentenced him to die nearly two decades ago did not consider his abusive childhood or mental illness.
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Contraband including weapons, cellphones, drones and grappling hooks believed to be headed to state prisons was seized at a warehouse in Oklahoma City, the Oklahoma Department of Corrections announced Friday.
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Turning around South Carolina’s chronically dangerous juvenile prisons is now the job of a prosecutor who sent some of those children to jail.
WASHINGTON (AP) — With just days left in his tenure, the embattled director of the federal prison system faced a bipartisan onslaught Tuesday as he refused to accept responsibility for a culture of corruption and misconduct that has plagued his agency for years.
A man who attacked police officers with poles during the riot at the U.S. Capitol was sentenced on Tuesday to more than five years in prison, matching the longest term of imprisonment so far among hundreds of Capitol riot prosecutions.
NEW YORK (AP) — Ghislaine Maxwell, the jet-setting socialite turned convicted sex trafficker, is off to Florida to serve a 20-year federal prison sentence for helping financier Jeffrey Epstein sexually abuse underage girls — returning to the same state, but a far cry from the posh lifestyle, where she committed some of her crimes.
PEARL, Miss. (AP) — A string quartet performed classical music, movie scores and hymns during a concert this week inside a Mississippi prison.
Two violinists, a viola player and a cellist from First Baptist Church of Jackson played for 68 inmates Tuesday at Central Mississippi Correctional Facility.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A prominent prison reform advocate committed an “evil act” when he disguised himself as a construction worker to hide guns, handcuff keys and hacksaw blades inside the walls of an under-construction Tennessee jail, Nashville Sheriff Daron Hall testified in court Tuesday.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The outgoing director of the Bureau of Prisons has been subpoenaed to testify before a Senate committee examining abuse and corruption in the beleaguered federal agency.
HOUSTON (AP) — Amid a summer heat wave that has pushed temperatures in some Texas prisons without air conditioning to 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 Celsius), many inmates fear dying or falling gravely ill from the hot weather and believe actions taken by officials to mitigate the dangerous conditions continue to fall short, according to a new report.
A court in Russia ruled Wednesday to keep a prominent opposition politician in custody pending an investigation and trial over his public criticism of Russia's military actions in Ukraine.
Ilya Yashin is one of the few opposition figures that haven't left Russia despite the unprecedented pressure the authorities have mounted on dissent.
A Maryland man who used a lacrosse stick attached to a Confederate battle flag to shove a police officer during the U.S. Capitol riot was sentenced on Wednesday to five months in prison, according to a Justice Department spokesman.
CLEVELAND (AP) — Three Americans were quietly jailed in Venezuela earlier this year for allegedly trying to enter the country illegally and now face long prison sentences in the politically turbulent nation.
FLORENCE, Ala. (AP) — A prisoner who prompted a nationwide manhunt when he disappeared this spring from an Alabama jail has been charged with killing the corrections official authorities said helped him escape.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department on Tuesday named Colette Peters, the director of Oregon’s prison system, to run the federal Bureau of Prisons, turning to a reform-minded outsider as it seeks to rebuild the beleaguered agency.
ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) — Nigerian authorities on Monday admitted shortcomings in security at a jail in the nation's capital after an attack that resulted in the escape of hundreds of inmates last week.