Free Republic

Backers of the criminal justice reform bill pending in Congress are intent on reducing the population of the federal prisons. Their premise? Prisons are overflowing with minor drug offenders who have no reason to be incarcerated – “mass incarceration” is the term they like to use. As many have pointed out, that premise is a lie. Less than one percent of the federal prison population is there for drug possession, and most of those pled down from a more serious offense. But the left is intent on releasing prisoners anyway – mostly before their sentences run. Those to be let...

Mass murderer of children gets a computer, a Playstation, and his own kitchen—but that’s not enough for the Norway court that called his prison conditions “degrading.” A Norway court just ruled that the prison where mass-murderer Anders Breivik is being held violated his human rights—but the perks he enjoys at the Scandinavian lock-up are downright plush. On Wednesday, an Oslo district court awarded Breivik—who killed 77 people in a 2011 shooting spree, including 69 children at the Utoya summer camp—with 331,000 kroner (roughly $40,600) and a promise for improved living conditions. Ruling from a makeshift courtroom in the prison gym,...

Oslo, Norway (CNN) — Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik has won part of his lawsuit against the state over his solitary confinement in a high-security prison, a court announced Wednesday. The Oslo district court found the 37-year-old's treatment in prison violated Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, prohibiting "inhuman or degrading treatment," and ruled that his conditions must be eased. The court also ordered the government to pay legal costs of 331,000 kroner ($40,600) for the right-wing extremist, who killed 77 people in a shooting rampage and bombing attack in 2011.

Responding to petitions and pleas of a minority of millennials who are as tired of being coddled as they are of being offended, the government has completed construction for the nation's first ever safe space. Constructed under the authority of an agency that was newly formed via an executive order by President Obama the Department of Understanding Millennials Better (DUMB) plans to open the 10,000 facility up to its first inhabitants in the coming weeks and already has a waiting list that is ten times that capacity. The facility will be known as "The Safe Space," or "the SS" for...

A Texas judge ordered Wednesday that "affluenza" teen Ethan Couch spend 720 days in jail -- nearly two years -- as a condition for his continued probation for a 2013 fatal drunken-driving crash. However, the judge said he'd give the defense two weeks to make an argument against the order. "Nothing is set in stone, so I might reconsider," the judge said in a court hearing in the case in Tarrant County, Texas.

A former soldier, who served in East Timor, is fighting for his life after a brutal attack by an ISIS supporter who was locked in the same prison cell of a New South Wales jail. The pair were placed together at Kempsey prison’s maximum security section, on the state’s Mid North Coast on Thursday morning, just a few hours before the unprovoked attack. It is believed the 18-year-old attacker choked the 40-year-old and carved ‘e4e’ into the front and back of the victim's head with a sharp object during the attack, to signify the group’s ‘eye for an eye’ torture...

A 41-year-old inmate at the Varner Unit was shot and killed Thursday while attempting to escape, according to a spokesman with the Arkansas Department of Correction. Spokesman Solomon Graves identified the inmate as Christopher Wilson of Saltillo. Wilson had been at the prison since 2003 after receiving a life sentence without parole for pleading guilty to two counts of capital murder, records show. Wilson entered the plea to avoid the death penalty in the December 2002 beating deaths of a woman and her 8-month-old son, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported Sept. 3, 2003. The husband of Pamela Kay Reed, 26, found...

What photos/drawings do you think Hillary Clinton will put up on the wall of her cell in prison? I think she'll have a photo of Sean Connery and a drawing by Barney Frank of some ducks.

The United States Supreme Court on Monday decided not to hear an appeal by disgraced former Gov. Rod Blagojevich. That decision was noted in a list of orders posted Monday on the court’s website.Blagojevich, 59, reported to a federal prison in Colorado four years ago to begin serving a 14­-year sentence. He was convicted of 18 counts over two trials. Among other things, he was accused of attempting to trade his power to appoint someone to a U.S. Senate seat — the one recently vacated by President Barack Obama — in exchange for personal benefits. A three-­judge appellate panel tossed...

Demonstrators waving posters, honking horns and yelling slogans gathered in Be’er Sheva Saturday night to protest against the arrest and jailing of an IDF soldier who shot and killed a terrorist who was apparently “neutralized” in Hebron last week. The protesters stood across from Prison No. 4 on Saturday night, where the soldier is incarcerated, according to Israeli radio. One of the protesters spoke with Channel 1 as other bystanders shot video with their cellphones, saying that he had served as a member of the Border Guard Police, and as a father of two combat soldiers,...

The American Civil Liberties Union is challenging a ban on letters, magazines and other mail sent to inmates at a Kentucky prison that contains material with gay-related content, news reports said Wednesday. The Lexington Herald-Leader reports that Kentucky ACLU legal director William Sharp has written to the Eastern Kentucky Correctional Complex to object to a policy that prohibits prisoners from receiving items that “promote homosexuality.” …

At an event today in Spokane, Washington, Bill Clinton called for putting "the awful legacy of the last 8 years behind us and the 7 years before that where we were practicing trickle down economics."

North Korea has released a grainy video that it claims shows American student Otto Warmbier attempting to steal a propaganda banner from a hotel — an accusation for which he received 15 years of hard labor. The short clip at the Yanggakdo International Hotel in Pyongyang shows an unidentifiable figure removing a sign from a wall before placing it on the floor. The banner in the hotel apparently says: "Let's arm ourselves strongly with Kim Jong Il patriotism," referring to the isolated state's leader who died in 2011. The short security-camera footage could not be verified, and the clip shows...

Both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are campaigning for Democratic votes in Florida on Thursday. Hundreds of people turned out for a Clinton campaign stop in Tampa, where the former First Lady and current frontrunner appeared at the Ritz Ybor.Supporters began lining up at 7:30 a.m. and an extra screen was set up for an overflow crowd anxious to hear her message in her first Tampa appearance since a failed presidential campaign in 2008.The former secretary of state leads Sanders by a margin of 62 percent to 32 percent among likely Florida Democratic voters, according to a Quinnipiac University poll...

Jared Fogle has not been eating fresh in prison — he’s already gained 30 pounds behind bars, according to a report. The sandwich-peddling pedophile has packed on the pounds in just three months thanks to his new prison diet: meals filled with sugar and fat. Jared Fogle has reported gained 30 pounds on his new prison diet. Joey Foley/Getty Images Jared Fogle has reported gained 30 pounds on his new prison diet. Fogle, the disgraced Subway spokesman who rose to fame after dropping 245 pounds eating a diet filled with sandwiches, has traded turkey and veggie subs for cakes and...

During my senior year in college, I applied to become an intern at the State Department's Foreign Service Institute. After passing a lengthy background check, I was given the lowest level security clearance. However, if I had been linked in any way to an ongoing law enforcement investigation, I'd never have been accepted even as an intern, and certainly would never have been given the lowest possible security clearance. Truth be told, you couldn't get a job at McDonalds if you were linked to an FBI investigation. Today, Hillary Clinton is linked to an ongoing FBI investigation, because she used...

SANTA ANA -- Three people died and two others, including a police officer, were wounded in a rash of shootings across the city this week, underscoring what the police chief on Friday called a surge in brazen gang-related crimes. Santa Ana police Chief Carlos Rojas said it was the worst week in a year already rocked by the 'busiest' January for his department since 2011. "We're seeing more gang activity now, and I think a lot of that has to do with gang members being released into the community and more of a soft-on-crime approach," Rojas said.

At least 52 inmates have been killed in a prison fire and riot in Northern Mexico, the Nuevo Leon state governor confirms.

O.J. Simpson's best defense may be coming 22 years after the death of Nicole Brown Simpson. The neuropathologist who discovered the brain disease that is rocking the NFL believes Simpson suffers from it. Bennet Omalu, the forensic pathologist who first identified chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), said he is beyond confident Simpson suffers from the disease that is caused by repeated brain trauma.

A joint Afghan-U.S. special forces operation freed at least 40 Afghan prisoners from a Taliban prison in the southern Helmand province, authorities said Friday. The troops carried out a helicopter assault on the prison in Nawzad district Thursday night, according to a statement from U.S. forces in Afghanistan. The operation freed 40 prisoners, who were captured Afghan police, army and border police. No U.S. ground forces were involved in the raid, Fox News confirmed.