Prison | featured news

Casey Anthony, the young Florida mother found not guilty of killing her 2-year-old daughter Caylee, completed a year of probation early on Friday but her attorney said freedom would be limited for the woman widely reviled after the acquittal.

A Moscow judge has sentenced each of three members of the provocative punk band Pussy Riot to two years in prison on hooliganism charges following a trial that has drawn international outrage.

The global campaign to free Pussy Riot is gaining speed: Supporters of the punk provocateur band mobilize this week in at least a two dozen cities worldwide to hold simultaneous demonstrations an hour before a Russian court rules on whether its members will be sent to prison....

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 ) .

Air Force Staff Sgt. Luis Walker was sentenced to 20 years in prison Saturday after being convicted of rape and sexual assault in a sweeping sex scandal at Lackland Air Force Base.

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.

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.

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.