Nov 21st, 2008 · A federal judge in Washington has ordered the Bush administration to release five detainees from the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The men have been held there for seven years on evidence the judge finds insufficient. The ruling is the first by a trial judge since the Supreme Court declared in June that the Guantanamo prisoners have the right to challenge their detentions in U.S. courts.
Nov 17th, 2008 · The 1998 tobacco case was the largest civil settlement in U.S. history, and it had far-reaching implications for states and tobacco companies. Ten years later, one of the major players in the case is governor of Washington, while another is in a Kentucky prison.
Nov 7th, 2008 · A federal judge in California is threatening to start contempt of court hearings against Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the state controller on Friday for not turning over millions of dollars to improve prison health care in the cash-strapped state.
Nov 6th, 2008 · Just two days after his election victory, President-elect Barack Obama appointed Rahm Emanuel to be his White House chief of staff. The Illinois congressman is known as a fiery, ferocious, take-no-prisoners Democrat. And is a sharp contrast to the inclusive, even-tempered, seldom-ruffled Obama.
Nov 1st, 2008 · The Narcotic Farm was one of America's most ambitious drug-treatment institutions. It was located in Lexington, Ky., and housed addicts from the famous, like writer William S. Burroughs, to the forgotten. Documentarian JP Olsen and drug policy expert Nancy Campbell collaborated on a new book and a PBS documentary titled The Narcotic Farm: The Rise and Fall of America's First Prison for Drug Addicts. They talk about the institution.
Oct 30th, 2008 · At Airway Heights Corrections Center in Spokane, Wash., prison officials are trying to change prison culture — instead of a regime of punishment and incarceration, they're turning the prison into something called a therapeutic community. If successful, the program may spread to prisons across the country.
Oct 29th, 2008 · The conviction of two Louisiana inmates for a correctional officer's death rests largely on the testimony of a single witness. For years people have been saying he never got any favors from the prison. But questions are being raised lately as to how he ended up in the best inmate housing, caring for bloodhounds rather than working in the fields.
Oct 28th, 2008 · Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox spent 36 years in solitary confinement in a Louisiana prison for the murder of a corrections officer. Decades later, questions are surfacing about how the wife of the lead investigator ended up as the forewoman on the jury and why the key witness was promised a pardon.