Prison, Prison Release | featured news

After 49 years behind bars, the nation's longest-serving female inmate is free. Betty Smithey, 69, whose prison term began following her conviction for the murder of a 15-month-old Phoenix girl in 1963, appeared at a parole hearing Monday morning and by that afternoon walked, with the aid of a cane, out of the gates of the Perryville state prison.

Federal officials say the rapper TI has been released from an Atlanta halfway house after spending about 10 months in federal prison on a probation violation.

Lindsay Lohan was freed from house arrest Wednesday morning, ending a drama-filled 35 days and opening the next chapter in the troubled starlet's efforts to put her court troubles behind her.

Former New York Giants star Plaxico Burress was released from prison on Monday after spending nearly two years behind bars on a gun charge and headed to Florida to be with his family as he contemplates his chances of playing again in the NFL....

Maine police are searching for a maximum-security inmate who was mistakenly released from the county jail.

Switzerland denied a request to release film director Roman Polanski, who was arrested in September after fleeing sentencing for a decades-old sex charge, a spokesman said on Tuesday.

In the first glimpse of him since his capture more than three years ago, a thin but healthy-looking Israeli soldier said in a video released Friday that he is being treated well by his Palestinian captors and appealed to Israel's leader to bring him home.

An Obama administration task force has so far cleared 75 of the remaining 223 Guantanamo prisoners for release as part of its effort to close the detention camp, a military spokesman said on Monday.

Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme was released from prison today, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Bureau of Prisons said. Fromme, a follower of Charles Manson, was convicted in 1975 of pointing a gun at President Ford. Secret Service agents prevented her from firing.

Federal judges call conditions in the prisons 'appalling' and unconstitutional. California must shrink the population of its teeming prisons by nearly 43,000 inmates over the next two years to meet constitutional standards, a panel of three federal judges ruled Tuesday, ordering the state to come up with a reduction plan by mid-September.