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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...

For the first time in 38 years, the number of state prisoners in the United States has declined, according to a new survey by the Pew Center on the States.

Reporting from Sacramento -- The battle over California prison inmates' constitutional rights has come down to this: finger-pointing over who dreamed up the idea of giving convicted criminals taxpayer-funded bingo and yoga rooms. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown have lambasted effortsby J. Clark Kelso, the court-appointed overseer of prison healthcare, to spend $8 billion on a "gold-plated utopian hospital plan" for 10,000 inmates. It features a "holistic" environment with natural light and space for yoga, music, horticulture and art therapy. On Tuesday, Kelso fired back, saying that the facilities are meant for mentally ill inmates, and...

It’s not a good sign when cell windows at a state prison are broken. But that was the situation just last year at Reception Center-East, one of four facilities at the California Institution for Men in Chino. Officers had complained about the windows repeatedly, but nothing was done to fix them – until an inmate was caught after slipping out his window in an apparent escape attempt. After that, officers began 24-hour patrols outside East as officials waited for Sacramento to approve funding for repairs. The facility is less than a half-mile from a housing development under construction. ‘‘We’re gonna...

When Correctional Officer Shayne Allyn Ziska was charged with conspiring to help prison gang members kill other inmates at the California Institution for Men, it wasn't the first time he'd been accused of misconduct. But it was the first time he faced any consequences. Ziska was convicted in February by a U.S. District Court judge on charges of conspiracy, civil rights violations and violent crime in aid of racketeering. He was sentenced last month to 17 years in federal prison. At his trial, several witnesses told how Ziska allowed inmates associated with the white supremacist Nazi Low Riders out of...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Prisoners at a handful of facilities statewide will be triple-bunked in two-person cells under a recently declared state of emergency triggered by overcrowding in the state prison system, a newspaper reported Tuesday. The state Department of Corrections says 1,200 unexpected inmates, most of them destined for maximum-security facilities, are arriving from financially strapped counties that can't accommodate them in their jails, according to a memo obtained by the Los Angeles Times. The emergency declaration took effect April 1 but was never made public. In it, prisoners at the low- security facilities of Avenal State Prison, Chuckawalla...

FRESNO — All through the night, the howls kept coming from the cell of inmate Ronald Herrera. More than one guard at Corcoran State Prison thought something was terribly amiss. Herrera wouldn't stop screaming late Sunday, and he had covered his cell window in a curtain of toilet paper soaked in blood. One guard had seen Herrera, a dialysis patient suffering from hepatitis, pull out the medical shunt from his arm, corrections officials said. But when the guard later tried to check on the inmate, his sergeant told him not to bother, they said. "He's not dead," the sergeant was...

SACRAMENTO — Agents who investigate wrongdoing in state prisons have been ordered not to disclose information about any aspect of their work to legislators, the media or the governor's office — and told to sign a pledge committing to follow the confidentiality rules or face possible sanctions. The directive, contained in a memo obtained by The Times, was issued as two state senators prepare to hold hearings on misconduct and coverups within the Department of Corrections, including a "code of silence" that often protects rogue guards. On Thursday, both senators expressed concern that the memo might discourage whistle-blowers from reporting...