prisons

While big-city jails get most of the attention, lockups in small and medium-sized counties have actually driven the overall explosion in the U.S. inmate population, according to a new analysis of 45 years of jail statistics.

More than 20 years after banning prisoners from receiving student aid, some federal and state inmates could be eligible for Pell grant money to take college courses while still behind bars.

It used to be that when gang kingpins were sent to prison in New Jersey they could still run their operations by using a smuggled cell phone to direct many types of criminal activity, however, that is no longer the case thanks to recent practices undertaken by the state Department of Corrections (DOC).

NEW YORK (AP) -- The New York City jail oversight board voted unanimously Tuesday to create restrictive housing units at Rikers Island for violent inmates, to limit guards' longstanding practice of placing inmates in solitary confinement for breaking jailhouse rules and to ban 23-hour confinement altogether for inmates younger than 21 by next year.

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) -- In December 1940, Owen Smith's mother wrote the superintendent of the then-Florida Industrial School for Boys about the welfare of her 14-year-old son, who had been sent there months earlier for being with a friend in a stolen car.

PHOENIX (AP) -- A teacher at an Arizona prison was alone in a room full of sex offenders before being stabbed and sexually assaulted by a convicted rapist, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press about an attack that highlighted major security lapses at the facility.

An increasing number of New Jersey inmates are maxing out their sentences, and are being released without supervision according to a report released Wednesday by the Pew Charitable Trusts.

"Hi, baby," Catherine La France cooed as she swept granddaughter Arianna into her arms and danced around the prison yard with the 3-year-old.

Authorities in New Jersey say natural causes are to blame for the death of a man in the Burlington County Jail last month.

New Jersey's county jails are clogged with suspects awaiting trial who can't afford to post their often-nominal bail, according to a new report.