Jail | featured news

After 49 years behind bars, the nation's longest-serving female inmate is free. Betty Smithey, 69, whose prison term began following her conviction for the murder of a 15-month-old Phoenix girl in 1963, appeared at a parole hearing Monday morning and by that afternoon walked, with the aid of a cane, out of the gates of the Perryville state prison.

The U.S. is locking up more illegal immigrants than ever, generating lucrative profits for the nation's largest prison companies, and an Associated Press review shows the businesses have spent tens of millions of dollars lobbying lawmakers and contributing to campaigns....

A man convicted of stealing a gun used in a murder was given 125 years in prison — about a century longer than the actual killers received after taking plea deals. Christopher G. Nichols, 27, was sentenced Tuesday for gun theft, trafficking in stolen property, being a felon in possession of firearms and other crimes, The Spokesman-Review reported ( http://is.gd/BOKh1e ) .

Eight years after he was convicted for the murders of his wife and unborn son, Scott Peterson has appealed his death sentence to the California Supreme Court.

Former neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman, who is charged with second-degree murder in the killing of unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin, was released on Friday from a Florida jail on $1 million bail, a sheriff's spokeswoman said... It was not immediately clear how the Zimmermans came up with the bond money.

Everyone's made a joke they thought was funny only to see it fall flat, but Park Jung-geun's attempt at humor could see him jailed for up to seven years in South Korea. Park, a photographer by profession, re-tweeted some messages from North Korea's official twitter feed, such as reports on the late leader Kim Jong Il's travels across the country and negative tweets about South Korea.

Dharun Ravi, who was convicted of bias intimidation for using a webcam to see his roommate kiss another man, has been released from jail after serving 20 days of a 30-day sentence.

Former jet-setting Texas tycoon R. Allen Stanford, whose financial empire once spanned the Americas, was sentenced Thursday to 110 years in prison for bilking investors out of more than $7 billion over 20 years in one of the largest Ponzi schemes in U.S. history.

A man released from jail on Memorial Day wound up boarding a plane without a ticket on Tuesday, San Diego Harbor Police said... Authorities later learned the man entered the tarmac through an emergency door in the airport's commuter terminal. Although the alarm sounded, the man quickly made his way through the tarmac and boarded the plane with the other passengers.

After apologizing for using a webcam to spy on his male roommate kissing another man days before the roommate killed himself, former Rutgers University student Dharun Ravi told a New Jersey state court he would report to jail Thursday to serve his 30-day sentence.