| September 12, 2008 | - Ninety-one-year-old Morton Sobell, who served almost two decades in Alcatraz and other federal prisons on espionage charges, publicly admitted for the first time that he had spied for the Soviets. He implicated his codefendant Julius Rosenberg but insisted that Ethel Rosenberg, who was executed along with her husband, was never actively involved in espionage. “She knew what he was doing,” Sobell said, “but what was she guilty of? Of being Julius's wife.”
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| June 2, 2007 | -
Jack Kevorkian was released from prison.
| Source:
AP via Washington Post
|
| May 30, 2007 | -
Paris Hilton went to jail and, according to family members, “breaks down crying a lot because she can't deal with the reality and the pressure.”
| Source:
AP via local6.com
|
| May 29, 2007 | -
Sex stimulants were banned in Australian
prisons.
| Source:
Daily Telegraph (Australia)
|
| November 9, 2006 | - The walls of a prison in Missouri were painted pink and accented with stenciled teddy bears. “We made it like a day care,” explained Sheriff Mike Rackley.
| Source:
CourtTVNews
|
| August 22, 2006 | - Eighteen prisoners used “fiery chili peppers” to escape from the Pematang Siantar Penitentiary in North Sumatra, Indonesia,.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| May 26, 2006 | - A Nebraska judge sentenced a man convicted of sexually assaulting a child to probation because the man is too short for prison.
| Source:
NBC4.com
|
| May 25, 2006 | - In San Diego a man named Lawrence Christopher Smith was sentenced to 84 years to life in prison for shooting and killing a man named Dom Perignon Champagne.
| Source:
Sign on San Diego
|
| May 22, 2006 | - A study found that one out of every 136 Americans was incarcerated.
| Source:
The Scotsman
|
| April 19, 2006 | -
British
doctors criticized China for harvesting organs for transplant from thousands of executed prisoners.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| March 2, 2006 | - The U.S. State Department asked for $100 million for the reconstruction of Iraqi
prisons.
| Source:
Democracy Now!
|
| March 2, 2006 | - It was reported that U.S. prisons often shackle women prisoners during childbirth.
| Source:
The New York Daily News
|
| February 16, 2006 | - New photos of the torture at Abu Ghraib
prison were released.
| Source:
ABC News Online
|
| February 16, 2006 | - The United Nations issued a report calling on the United States to either try the approximately 500 inmates at the Guantánamo Bay
prison for their crimes or release them.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| February 16, 2006 | - A man in Texas was sentenced to 30 years in prison for raping his former girlfriend, then branding her.
| Source:
Chron.com
|
| February 10, 2006 | - Former Connecticut Governor John G. Rowland was released from prison.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| February 5, 2006 | - Twenty-three people, 12 of them convicted Al Qaeda terrorists, escaped via a tunnel from a prison in Yemen. One of the escapees, Jamal Ahmed Badawi, had been sentenced to death for organizing the October 2000 attack on the destroyer U.S.S. Cole.
| Source:
CNN.com
|
| January 19, 2006 | - A man in Australia escaped from prison by losing enough weight to slip through a hole.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| January 18, 2006 | - A two-year, $939,233 study commissioned by the U.S. Justice Department found that inmates who claim to have been raped in prison are usually lying. In prison, the study explained, sexual pressure is not seen as coercion; rather, "sexual pressure ushers, guides, or shepherds the process of sexual awakening."
| Source:
Chron.com
|
| November 24, 2005 | - A 1,600-inmate faith-based
prison opened in Crawfordville, Florida.
| Source:
Gainesville.com
|
| November 18, 2005 | - The Pentagon revealed that since September 11, 2001, it has detained more than 80,000 prisoners at facilities around the world.
| Source:
Guardian Unlimited
|
| September 22, 2005 | - In Wichita Falls, Texas, a man named Roderick Johnson was suing prison officials for allowing him to be made into a sexual slave. Johnson testified that he had once been the "property" of a prison gang called the Gangster Disciples, who rented him out at rates ranging from $3 to $7 per rape. A defendant in the case said that Johnson’s testimony was not credible because he never showed the "bruises," "possible broken bones," or "a little worse" that would prove that the sex was nonconsensual.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| July 13, 2005 | - Bernard Ebbers was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison.
| Source:
MSNBC
|
| June 7, 2005 | -
Australian officials were investigating allegations that prison guards tricked a prisoner into inserting a sausage into his rectum.
| Source:
Herald Sun
|
| May 30, 2005 | -
Amnesty International released a report calling the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay “the gulag of our time.” General Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the prison camp was “a model facility” and pointed out that 1,300 Korans had been handed out at the prison in the last four years.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| May 27, 2005 | - In North Carolina a man was released from prison after serving thirty-five years of his life sentence for stealing a $140 TV set.
| Source:
WRAL.com
|
| April 25, 2005 | - It was revealed that Condoleezza Rice ordered a German citizen released from an American-supervised prison in Afghanistan after it was determined that the man had been wrongly detained and tortured.
| Source:
SMH.com.au
|
| April 3, 2005 | - Militants in Iraq attacked the Abu Ghraib prison, wounding forty-four American soldiers and twelve prisoners.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| March 30, 2005 | - A federal judge refused to let the Bush Administration, which opposes torture, send prisoners from Guantánamo Bay to other prisons abroad without granting the prisoners access to the courts.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| March 12, 2005 | - A twelve-year-old British boy who raped his special-needs teacher was sentenced to life in prison.
| Source:
The Guardian
|
| March 7, 2005 | - An Arizona ice-cream-truck driver who raped and impregnated a nine-year-old girl was sentenced to life in prison.
| Source:
KPHO
|
| March 5, 2005 | -
Martha Stewart was released from prison. While incarcerated Stewart's wealth increased $700 million, and her cappuccino
machine broke.
| Source:
Times Online
|
| February 18, 2005 | -
Texas
executed another prisoner.
| Source:
CNN
|
| February 11, 2005 | - The Supreme Court of California decided to allow mentally retarded
death-row
prisoners to appeal their cases.
| Source:
LA Times
|
| February 1, 2005 | - Two British
terrorism detainees chose to remain in prison rather than accept house arrest.
| Source:
The Guardian
|
| December 26, 2004 | - A 9.0 magnitude earthquake created a tsunami that ravaged south and southeast Asia, as well as parts of Africa. The wave reached from Somalia and Kenya to Malaysia. Thousands of fatalities were reported in the Maldives, Sri Lanka, South India, Thailand, Bangladesh, and Indonesia. Three-story waves washed sunbathers into the sea, carried away snorkelers, and swallowed up Hindu ritual bathers celebrating Full Moon Day. A prison in Sumatra was torn open by the tsunami, and hundreds of inmates fled. A baby was washed from her father's arms. At least 25,000 died, and millions were displaced. Entire towns were turned into rubble. Corpses hung from trees and fences, and the rotting bodies of humans and animals threatened to pollute water supplies. It was difficult to bury the dead for lack of dry ground. The earthquake was the largest since 1964, and slightly altered the rotation of the earth.
| Source 1:
New York Timesimes
Source 2:
Wikipedia
Source 3:
New York Timesimes
Source 4:
MSNBC
Source 5:
Reuters
|
| December 22, 2004 | -
Martha Stewart called for prison reform.
| Source:
Forbes
|
| November 10, 2004 | - Former high-school football star Demarco McCullum, Texas
prisoner #999180, became the 21st prisoner executed in that state this year.
| Source 1:
The Advocate
Source 2:
CNN
|
| September 15, 2004 | -
Martha Stewart asked for permission to begin her five-month prison sentence early instead of waiting for her appeal. Stewart said she would be sad to miss the holiday season but that it was time to reclaim her "good life. I must return to my good works."
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| August 20, 2004 | - There was a prison uprising in Olmito, Texas.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| August 19, 2004 | - Twenty-seven inmates of the county jail in Clearwater, Florida, who were released so that they could flee Hurricane Charley were still at large; 256 inmates were let out of jail but most returned in four days as instructed.
| Source:
WTSP Tampa
|
| July 17, 2004 | -
Martha Stewart was sentenced to five months in prison.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| June 2, 2004 | - Thirty prisoners and one guard died in a prison uprising in Brazil.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 2, 2004 | -
Arkansas released 680 prison inmates early because of overcrowding.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| May 25, 2004 | - President Bush unveiled his new "five-point plan" for Iraq during a speech at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and offered to destroy the Abu Ghraib prison if Iraqis want him to; the president also promised to give Iraq a modern prison system.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| May 12, 2004 | - A new report found that almost 10 percent of prisoners in federal and state prisons are serving life sentences.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| April 30, 2004 | - The Urban Institute released a study showing that in some U.S. counties 30 percent of the population is in prison, and an
| Source:
New York Times
|
