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Live Out Your Walking Dead Fantasies In This Abandoned Tennessee Prison - Modern Ruins We're going to have to wait until season three of The Walking Dead TV show to see the zombie-filled prison. But if you're near Nashville, you can visit the Tennessee State Prison, an abandoned penitentiary. It looks like the zombies got to it first. Even before it fell into decay, this prison suffered plenty of woes at the hands of its prisoners. In 1902, a group of prisoners blew out a wing of the facility, killing one prisoner and allowing others to escape (two were never...

Rashid Qawi Al-Amin succeeded where thousands of Virginia prison inmates before him have failed: He prevailed in a lawsuit against the government. Al-Amin won a settlement with the state that forces the prison system to supply him, and the Greensville Correctional Center library, with Muslim reading materials, CDs and DVDs. He'll also receive $2,000. Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli's office decided to settle the seven-year legal battle after a series of court rulings in Al-Amin's favor. The state admitted no wrongdoing in the settlement but did agree to perform eight different acts to satisfy Al-Amin's claims. The case highlights a trend...

(AP) — Officials at a Northern California prison believe an inmate found dead in his cell was killed by his cellmate. Officials at High Desert State Prison say the inmate was pronounced dead around 9:29 a.m. Thursday after being found unresponsive in his cell. Officials have not released the name of the inmate, but say he was serving 90 years to life on a conviction out of Riverside County for the aggravated sexual assault of a child.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday unanimously upheld California's handling of inmate appeals; at least, so far as deadlines go. In a case arising out of a 1986 murder in Sacramento, the Court ruled that California need not set a specific deadline for when inmates file their habeas corpus petitions. . . .

O.J. Simpson's been an afterthought since he went to prison, but a report today that he was brutally beaten by skinheads in his prison cell has him back in the media spotlight. The National Enquirer, which gained noticeable sports cred when they broke the Tiger Woods scandal, reports that Simpson was "beaten unconscious in a brutal prison yard attack" and is now so messed-up mentally that he can't leave his cell. "Unfortunately for O.J., a group of young skinhead punks were within earshot - and they were enraged," Bruce Fromong, a former business partner of Simpson's told the Enquirer. The...

Sheriff Joe Arpaio Holds Prison-Wide Christmas Caroling Contestby Alex Alvarez | 3:11 pm, December 21st, 2010 Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio is famous, to put it somewhat euphemistically, for thinking outside the pen when it comes to punishing his state’s criminals. Now the man who made headlines for making inmates don pink underwear is in the news yet again, this time for organizing a caroling contest among inmates, with the most angelic rendition of “All I Want for Christmas is You” winning a festive Christmas dinner. Arpaio has drawn criticism — not to mention a few lawsuits — for another Christmas...

NEW DELHI -- Followed by the politics of home, President Barack Obama on Sunday acknowledged that he must make some "midcourse corrections" if he is to win over a frustrated electorate and work with resurgent Republicans. On the second of the three days he is spending in India, Obama arrived in New Delhi on Sunday afternoon in the company of his wife, Michelle. Among his airport greeters were Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who apparently broke the normally rigid rules of protocol by making the trip to personally welcome Obama to the Indian capital.

Forget the death penalty, which is nearly a dead letter already. The impending parole of 77-year-old Henry Michael Gargano after 43 years in federal prison for murdering Northlake policemen John Nagel and Anthony Sperri should spur a serious examination of the need to abolish life sentences. The U.S. Parole Commission has set Gargano's release for Sept. 3, citing his model behavior over the past 10 years, advanced age, poor health and little likelihood of engaging in criminal behavior. Opponents of Gargano's release include Officer Nagle's son, the deputy Northlake police chief and 6,000 supporters who signed petitions. Gargano's incarceration has...

TALLAHASSEE -- Florida fugitive Paula Eileen Carroll got an unpleasant birthday surprise this morning when she was arrested by Brevard County Sheriff’s Officers at her home for escaping from the Florida prison system more than three decades ago. Carroll escaped 34 years ago from a Florida prison where she was serving a five year sentence for buying, receiving or concealing stolen property. She was sentenced on July 18, 1975 for the Osceola county offense, and escaped less than two months later, on September 3, 1975. A tipster had contacted Fugitive Coordinator Rita Hall with the Department of Corrections’ Fugitive Unit...

This press release was shared with me by Dudley Sharp: "EXONERATED" FORMER DEATH ROW INMATE RECONVICTED So-called "Innocence List" Conclusively Debunked Former death row inmate Timothy Hennis, listed as "exonerated" on the "innocence list" maintained by the Death Penalty Information Center, was found guilty of three counts of premeditated murder by a military jury today. "This is the smoking gun that proves what we have been saying for years," said Kent Scheidegger, Legal Director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation. "The so-called innocence list is nothing of the sort." For years, the "innocence list" has been cited by opponents of...

  Story and Photo By U.S. Army SFC Matthew Chlosta ISAF PAO KABUL—A workshop and press conference, with more than 50 attendees focused on the progress and future of Afghanistan’s corrections system was held on Mar. 23-24 in the Milano building at the International Security Assistance Force Headquarters. The first of this year’s bi-annual meetings was sponsored in partnership with the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, the United States, British and Canadian Embassies and the Afghan Ministry of Justice and managed by the ISAF Deputy Chief of Staff for Stability /Governance Branch. “The purpose of the conference is...

In September 2009, prison inmate Kyle Mabe ordered music and sermon CDs to further his Christian faith. Rutherford Institute founder John Whitehead picks up the story. "The St. Brides Correctional Center, which is a small prison in Chesapeake, Virginia, denied him the right to hear the sermons," he explains. "They said music CDs are okay, but you can't have any sermons." CDs with the spoken word have been banned, which the attorney explains does not align with the U.S. Constitution. The Institute filed suit based on Mabe's First Amendment right to practice his religion, and on previous court rulings. "There...

A special grand jury has found that officers have smuggled drugs into the Henry County jail and have had sex with inmates, while administrators and supervisors have been inadequate in trying to stop the behavior. The sheriff's office said in a news release that the two-year investigation has resulted in perjury charges against two people, Deputy Glenn Stokes and former Deputy Mary Markland.

Bergen County Jail inmates who want to brush up on their legal defense can do so now from their cells, a move that officials say is a first nationwide.  Jail officials have begun rolling out the first batch of 80 laptops – each about the size and heft of a large hardcover novel – to some of the 1,000 inmates who occupy the near-capacity lockup. About $100,000 has been spent so far from an account funded by profits from items purchased from inmates, such as toothpaste and candy bars, to buy the $1,200 notebooks and install the necessary wireless...

A prison guard who acknowledged being a member of white supremacist group the Ku Klux Klan has been fired for belonging to a subversive or terrorist organisation, a violation of the county agency's code of ethics. Wayne Kerschner, an Alachua County Sheriff's Office corrections officer, was fired on Tuesday following a 10-month internal investigation. The investigation revealed that Kerschner applied online for membership to the United Northern and Southern Knights of the Ku Klux Klan a year ago, paid $US30 a month for access to a members-only Klan web site and that the group did a thorough background check that...

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - Convicted sniper John Allen Muhammad will die by lethal injection when he is executed next month, Virginia officials said Tuesday. Muhammad declined to choose between lethal injection and electrocution, so under state law the method defaults to lethal injection, Virginia Department of Corrections spokesman Larry Traylor said. Muhammad is scheduled to be executed Nov. 10 for the October 2002 slaying of Dean Harold Meyers at a Manassas gas station during a string of shootings.

OKLAHOMA CITY — Prosecutors are investigating claims that the former head chef and chief groundskeeper at the Oklahoma governor's mansion raped three female prison inmates assigned to work on the mansion's grounds. Neither man has been charged, but the Department of Central Services fired both of them Sept. 29 for violating departmental policies after a three-month Department of Corrections investigation.

BISHOPVILLE, SC (WIS) - Department of Corrections officers are using tear gas to quell a large fight that broke out among dozens of inmates at Lee Correctional Institute in Bishopville Saturday. Corrections spokesman Josh Gelinas said the fight started at around 4:30pm among about 60 inmates of the Chesterfield Dormitory that were out of their cells. Two officers approached the dorm to try to stop the fighting, Gelinas said, but realized there were too many inmates involved to safely intervene. The officers exited the dorm, blocked the doors and called for backup. The fighting continued for about 20 minutes, Gelinas...

California Assembly Speaker Karen Bass plans to strip the most controversial provisions from a Senate-approved plan that would have trimmed the state's prison population by 27,000 inmates. The Assembly version would keep about 10,000 more inmates behind bars and leave the state with a new, nearly $200 million budget hole, Bass said early Friday. Bass said the new plan -- to be considered Monday -- would do away with proposals by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to allow home detention with electronic monitoring for inmates with less than 12 months to serve, who are over age 60 or who are medically incapacitated....

BURGIN, Ky. (AP) - Rioting inmates started several fires at a central Ky. prison, and damage to several buildings was so extensive that officials have to bus some of the facility's 1,200 prisoners elsewhere, police said Saturday. State police Lt. David Jude said firefighters had extinguished the blazes set at the medium-security Northpoint Training Center in a rural area 30 miles south of Lexington. Buses started to transport the first prisoners shortly after 6 a.m., but it wasn't immediately known where they were going and whether all the inmates would have to be moved. "To me it would seem like...

Gov. Bill Ritter's plan to cut the state budget through inmate releases could reduce Colorado's prison population by 1,000 in a year and immediately save $19 million. It will also almost certainly accelerate the commission of new crimes, and could force layoffs from a privately run prison. Ritter's plan calls for trimming parole supervision for some inmates already out of prison, and releasing some non-sex-offender inmates early and placing them on parole. A total of 5,700 inmates or parolees could see their status change as a result of Ritter's cut. A Metropolitan State College of Denver professor says it's unavoidable...

BALTIMORE (AP) ― Maryland is moving forward with plans for two new detention centers in Baltimore, one for teens facing adult criminal charges and another for women. The two projects, which are expected to cost the state more than $280 million, would keep adult male detainees separate from women and teens as required by federal law. Currently, the three groups share hallway, classroom and booking space. The projects are the first in a long-term plan to overhaul a complex of at least a dozen prison buildings. A state architectural board is expected to review the design for the teen detention...

SNIPPET: "Since 9/11, the general focus on prison radicalism in the media and in government has been on the process of certifying imams and literature available to inmates. Fully understanding the impact of this phenomenon, however, requires a historical look back at Islam in prison. The seeds of jihad were planted in the prison soil by men like Warith Deen Umar long before we were attacked in 2001. Having spent 26 years working in New York 's Department of Correctional Services, I have witnessed this process of radicalization first-hand. Sometimes it was monitored; sometimes a recruitment cell was infiltrated. As...

LEV L. DASSIN, the Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced that HOPE SPINATO, 42, of Pinebush, New York, was sentenced yesterday to eight months in prison by United States District Judge KENNETH M. KARAS in White Plains federal court. SPINATO, a former correctional officer at Federal Correctional Institute Otisville (“FCI Otisville”), pleaded guilty on April 21, 2009, to one count of aiding and assisting an inmate escape from FCI Otisville. According to the Information filed in White Plains federal court and a previously filed Complaint: On or about July 15, 2007, SPINATO, who was...

STANDISH, Mich. -- Federal officials visited a maximum-security prison in rural Michigan on Thursday to assess its suitability to house Guantanamo Bay inmates. Representatives of the Defense, Justice and Homeland Security departments toured the prison in Standish, 145 miles north of Detroit. The Standish prison and a military penitentiary at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., are being considered to house the detainees if the prison in Cuba is closed by 2010, as ordered by President Barack Obama. The Guantanamo Bay facility houses 229 suspected al Qaeda, Taliban and foreign fighters. Some locals favor bringing the detainees to Standish if necessary to keep...

<p>LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) -- A former chief of staff for Bill Clinton when he was Arkansas' governor has been charged with attempting to smuggle contraband goods into the state's death row.</p> <p>Betsey Wright, of Rogers, faces 51 felony charges stemming from her arrest May 22 at the state's Varner Unit. An Arkansas State Police report claims she attempted to smuggle in a box cutter, a pocket knife, tweezers and tattoo needles.</p>

LEBANON, Ohio (Map, News) – A man from Clermont County’s Union Township, who admitted to shooting and killing a teenager with a shotgun who refused to heed his warnings to stay off his lawn, has committed suicide in an Ohio prison. The 15-year-old victim, Larry Mugrage Jr. was shot by 69-year-old Charles Martin in March 2006. He was indicted for Aggravated Murder, but the jury in the Clermont County Common Pleas Court found him guilty on a lesser charge of murder. He had originally pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, but jurors rejected that argument. Martin, who received a...

Hundreds Hurt in 11-Hour California Prison RiotSOLOMON MOORE Published: August 9, 2009 LOS ANGELES — Rioting inmates smashed and burned a large California prison on Saturday night and Sunday morning, injuring 250 prisoners and hospitalizing 55. The 11-hour riot, at the Reception Center West at the California Institution for Men in Chino, about 40 miles east of Los Angeles, broke down along racial lines, with black prison gangs fighting Latino gangs in hand-to-hand combat, the authorities said. No prison employees were injured, no deaths were reported, and no inmates escaped, state officials said. But 10 of the 33 prisons in...

AUGUST 7, 2009 California Scrambles to Prepare for Inmate Release BOBBY WHITE and RYAN KNUTSON California state and local officials, already reeling from budget cuts and public-safety layoffs, are struggling with a federal order to release about 40,000 inmates to reduce prison overcrowding and bracing for the impact on their communities. State officials have said they will appeal the decision, but as a contingency are cobbling together proposals to comply with the order. At the same time, cash-strapped local governments in places such as Los Angeles and Fresno are grappling with how to monitor and support thousands of released inmates...

Sean Hannity had some fun at Attorney General Eric Holder’s expense last night. On a special segment of his FOX News program, Hannity ran a video clip of Holder addressing the American Bar Association. On the tape, Holder told the ABA audience that, “spending on prisons continues to rise. This is unsustainable…” Hannity said he found it amusing that Holder represented the very same administration addicted to “unsustainable spending” on “everything from dinky airports to crab trapping.” Holder’s address touched on familiar liberal talking points — taking it as a given that society needs an “alternative” to prisons — without...

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - U.S. judges on Tuesday told California to prepare to release more than 40,000 of its 150,000 inmates to reduce overcrowding in state prisons, which suffer from massive healthcare problems. The cash-strapped state already plans to release ailing and short-term inmates for budget issues. That would clear up to 37,000 beds over two years, estimated California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Secretary Matthew Cate. But he said an order from federal judges would set a "dangerous precedent" and argued at a news conference that California had cleaned up prisons and hired medical professionals to fill chronic gaps...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has outlined a plan to save $1.2 billion in prison spending. In all, the governor says, the plan would reduce the California prison population of 167,700 by about 27,000 inmates. Some details: Felony no more: Petty thefts, writing bad checks and receiving stolen property will no longer be charged as felonies. Vehicle thefts: Stealing a car won't automatically be considered a felony anymore. Grand theft: Stealing an item valued at more than $400 won't automatically be considered grand theft. Alternative custody: Certain prison inmates deemed low-risk offenders would be eligible to serve their sentences outside of prison....

FORWARD OPERATING BASE FUTURE, Iraq, July 20, 2009 – An instructor shouts commands in Arabic. Recruits snap into fighting stances. The instructor tests the recruits, shaking them and kicking their legs. One recruit makes a mistake, and the instructor drops him for push-ups. This training may seem like Army boot camp, but these men aren't preparing to be soldiers. They are training to become Iraqi correctional officers. At the Iraqi National Training Academy on Victory Base Complex near Baghdad, Iraqi instructors are training four platoons of recruits to become the foundation of the Iraqi correctional system. The academy is the...

ACLU pushes prison to stop cutting out Bible passages included in letters from the outside.

Mich. in talks to possibly take Calif. prisoners By KATHY BARKS HOFFMAN Associated Press Writer Monday, Jun. 29, 2009 LANSING, Mich. -- Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm sent a letter Monday to California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger formally offering to house - for a fee - some of the Golden State's prison inmates. Michigan plans to close two prisons by the end of September: the Standish Maximum Correctional Facility about 145 miles northwest of Detroit and a medium-security prison in Muskegon, located in central Michigan. Michigan could save the jobs of about half of the 1,000 prison guards it plans to lay...

LANSING, Mich. -- Empty Michigan prisons could become home to hundreds of California inmates if a deal can be struck. Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm sent a letter Monday to California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger formally offering space for some of the inmates California is running out of room to house to Michigan. Download: Ganholm Letter To Schwarzenegger Michigan plans to close two prisons by the end of September. They are the Standish Maximum Correctional facility about 145 miles northwest of Detroit and a medium-security prison in Muskegon, about 45 miles northwest of Grand Rapids. Michigan could save the jobs of about...

The coin of the realm in the Big House - as penitentiaries are inevitably called in prison films - isn't money. Prisoners make only a tiny amount for their labor and are not allowed other valuables. Instead, they gamble and barter for supplies using . . . cigarettes. A sign of the times in all federal, and many state, prisons But not so much in real life any more. Last year, pressured by health advocates, officials banned smoking - even in exercise yards - in the nation's 115 federal prisons. And state pens - even in places like Florida, where...

INDIANAPOLIS — Two Muslim inmates held in a special unit at the U.S. prison in Terre Haute say they aren’t allowed to pray in groups as often as their religion commands and have asked a federal judge to ease limitations on worship imposed by the Bureau of Prisons. The prison in western Indiana houses several high-security inmates, including American-born Taliban soldier John Walker Lindh, who is serving a 20-year sentence for aiding Afghanistan’s now-defunct Taliban government. The June 16 lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana challenges limits on Islamic worship in the prison’s restrictive Communications Management...

TROY, Va. (AP) - For more than a year, Virginia's largest women's prison rounded up inmates who had loose-fitting clothes, short hair or otherwise masculine looks, sending them to a unit officers derisively dubbed the "butch wing," prisoners and guards say. Dozens were moved in an attempt to split up relationships and curb illegal sexual activity at the 1,200-inmate Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women, though some straight women were sent to the wing strictly because of their appearance, the inmates and corrections officers said. Civil rights advocates called the moves unconstitutional punishment for "looking gay." The warden denied that any...

ATLANTA (AP) - The recession is hitting home for inmates ...

JAILED music legend Phil Spector has posted a string of astonishing internet blogs before and after being sentenced to 19 years for murder. The producer, who has been allowed to keep a laptop computer and iPod in his cell at Los Angeles County Jail, has been rattling off revealing messages via the chat site Twitter. In them, Spector, 69, who was convicted by a retrial jury last month for the murder of actress Lana Clarkson, tells how: The authorities took his wig; He has befriended a cockroach – “I’m naming him Wilson” – and is playing air chess with him;...

Amid all the shocking details in the disrupted plot to bomb Bronx synagogues and fire missiles at American military aircraft, one component of the case should come as no surprise - three of the alleged culprits converted to radical Islam in prison. Radical Islamists have targeted prison populations for recruitment for years. That's where Jose Padilla, suspected of plotting to detonate a dirty bomb and convicted of conspiracy to murder people overseas and of providing material support to terrorists, converted and was radicalized. That's where a California man, Kevin James, created his own cell, called the Jam'iyyat Ul-Islam Is-Saheeh (JIS),...

The possibility that the alleged New York bomb plotters converted to Islam in prison and adopted radical views could provide evidence of how the criminal-justice system can be fertile ground for terrorist recruitment. Authorities said they believed all four men charged in the attack were Muslim and that some may have converted in prison. It isn't clear whether these conversions were linked to the radical views officials say they espoused while plotting to bomb two New York City synagogues and shoot down U.S. military planes... According to New York state corrections records, alleged ringleader James Cromitie and David Williams gave...

The possibility that the alleged New York bomb plotters converted to Islam in prison and adopted radical views could provide evidence of how the criminal-justice system can be fertile ground for terrorist recruitment. Authorities said they believed all four men charged in the attack were Muslim and that some may have converted in prison. It isn't clear whether these conversions were linked to the radical views officials say they espoused while plotting to bomb two New York City synagogues and shoot down U.S. military planes. The men were arrested Wednesday in a months-long undercover operation that ended with them allegedly...

As I noted yesterday and many times in the past, the four Muslims caught trying to blow up New York synagogues and U.S. planes converted to Islam in prison, where the Muslim chaplaincy is controlled by CAIR, ISNA, and an alphabet soup of extremists and jihadists. Today, Bill Warner points out that the men met at Masjid Al-Ikhlas, a Newburgh, New York mosque, whose imam is Salahuddin Muhammad, a New York prison chaplain. Hello . . .? Yet, authorities refuse to do anything to this guy. And they continue to refuse to overhaul the Muslim prison chaplain system and who...

LAS VEGAS (AP) ― Inmates in Nevada's prison system are preparing for life without cigarettes as they prepare for a smoking ban to take effect July 1. The majority of other states already ban tobacco use in prisons. Nevada is joining them because of health care costs, cleanliness and a 2006 state law that bans smoking indoors. But inmates won't get aids like gum and patches to help them quit, only instructional DVDs to tell them how to stop.

Text size: Indictments reveal prison crime world Officers, inmates charged in drugs, extortion By Justin Fenton | justin.fenton@baltsun.com April 17, 2009 The court records read like a scene out of Goodfellas: From their prison cells and with the help of corrections staff, authorities say, members of a violent gang were feasting on salmon and shrimp, sipping Grey Goose vodka and puffing fine cigars - all while directing drug deals, extorting protection money from other inmates and arranging attacks on witnesses and rival gang members. A seven-month investigation that included wiretaps on contraband prison cell phones led to the indictment on...

America's criminal justice system has deteriorated to the point that it is a national disgrace. Its irregularities and inequities cut against the notion that we are a society founded on fundamental fairness. Our failure to address this problem has caused the nation's prisons to burst their seams with massive overcrowding, even as our neighborhoods have become more dangerous. We are wasting billions of dollars and diminishing millions of lives.

America's criminal justice system has deteriorated to the point that it is a national disgrace. Its irregularities and inequities cut against the notion that we are a society founded on fundamental fairness. Our failure to address this problem has caused the nation's prisons to burst their seams with massive overcrowding, even as our neighborhoods have become more dangerous. We are wasting billions of dollars and diminishing millions of lives. We need to fix the system. Doing so will require a major nationwide recalculation of who goes to prison and for how long and of how we address the long-term consequences...

<p>McALESTER, Okla. — A 23-year-old inmate beaten to death at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary had been put in a cell with convicted killer he had testified against.</p> <p>Prison spokesman Jerry Massie says Paul Duran Jr. fought with one cellmate and then was put in a cell with Jessie James Dalton.</p>