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The Justice Department will release some 6,000 inmates from federal prisons beginning at the end of the month as part of new sentencing guidelines for drug crimes established last year, a federal law enforcement official confirmed Tuesday to Fox News. The new drug sentencing guidelines from U.S. Sentencing Commission, which are intended to reduce penalties on certain nonviolent drug offenders, also applies to any future offenders. The U.S. Sentencing Commission decided in July 2014 that close to 50,000 federal inmates locked up on drug charges would be eligible for reduced sentences. The new sentencing guidelines took effect on Nov. 1,...

American prisons to free 6,000 drug traffickers in biggest-ever inmate release October 30 will see 6,000 drug dealers freed from American jails as the country struggles to cope with the world's largest prison population By Harriet Alexander, New York 07 Oct 2015 Six thousand drug traffickers are to be freed from American prisons at the end of this month, in the country's largest-ever mass release of prisoners. The men and women will be freed as part of a plan to reduce overcrowding. America is the world's biggest jailer, and a quarter of the whole world's prison population is in the...

The Justice Department is set to release about 6,000 inmates early from prison — the largest one-time release of federal prisoners — in an effort to reduce overcrowding and provide relief to drug offenders who received harsh sentences over the past three decades. The inmates from federal prisons nationwide will be set free by the department’s Bureau of Prisons between Oct. 30 and Nov. 2. Most of them will go to halfway houses and home confinement before being put on supervised release. The early release follows action by the U.S. Sentencing Commission — an independent agency that sets sentencing policies...

Whole Foods will stop selling products made using a prison labor program after a protest at one of its stores in Texas. The company said the products should be out of its stores by April 2016, if not sooner. Whole Foods said it has sold tilapia, trout and goat cheese produced through a Colorado inmate program at some stores since at least 2011. Michael Silverman, a Whole Foods spokesman, said the company had sourced the products because the program was a way to "help people get back on their feet and eventually become contributing members of society."

Twenty-seven senators want President Obama to block federal agencies and contractors from asking job applicants about prior criminal convictions. The senators, including 26 Democrats and presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), want Obama to take executive action to "ban the box," referring to a question on job applications that asks if an applicant has any convictions. "We ask you to require federal contractors and agencies to refrain from asking job applicants about prior convictions until later in the hiring process," they said in a letter to Obama on Monday. "This policy would eliminate unnecessary barriers to employment for all job...

Nearly 15 hours after a riot at a Northern California prison, guards found a missing inmate sawed nearly in two, with his abdominal organs and most chest organs removed, his body folded and stuffed into a garbage can in a shower stall a few doors from his cell. Details of the gruesome May killing at the medium-security California State Prison, Solano, are laid out in an autopsy report obtained by The Associated Press under a public records request.

Immigration officials knowingly released dozens of murderers back into the U.S. in 2013, according to Obama administration statistics detailing all of the criminal convictions of the more than 36,000 immigrants released from custody last year. The numbers show that the criminals released by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had amassed more than 15,000 drunken-driving convictions, 1,317 domestic violence convictions, 727 sex crimes convictions and even four that the statistics listed as “treason, sabotage.” The immigrants were in deportation proceedings, meaning ICE was trying to remove them from the country and could have held them in detention, but released them anyway,

An Alameda County judge has ruled that Secretary of State Debra Bowen erred when she told California election officials to forbid some 42,000 former prisoners and other felons from registering to vote. Superior Court Judge Evelio Grillo’s decision Wednesday likely comes too late to permit former state inmates and others put under community supervision because of the state’s prison overcrowding to register in time to vote in the state’s primary elections. […] The case centers on Gov. Jerry Brown’s decision in 2011 to make room in the state’s crowded prisons by creating new classes of offenders—low-level felons who serve their...

Certain prisoners to get health coverage under ObamaCare Prisons could relocate medical costs to the federal government LOS ANGELES — Soon certain prisoners who need medical treatment could get it through Obamacare. Watch the video (go to link) for more information.

In 1963, the great civil rights leader Martin Luther King said it was his hope that black Americans would no longer be judged on their color of their skin, but on the content of their character. Fifty years later, the Obama administration's Equal Employment Opportunity Commission says King got it wrong. The EEOC launched two lawsuits against private companies this week over their use of criminal background checks, claiming that in rejecting applicants with proven criminal records, they somehow discriminated against minorities under a disparate impact clause in their guidelines. Aside from the inherent and insulting racism in that presumption...

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) demanded that the United Nations launch an investigation into the United States “racially discriminatory election laws.” At issue is the loss of voting rights for convicted felons. “This is unfair because minorities are disproportionately affected,” Lorraine Miller, Chairperson of the NAACP national board’s advocacy and policy committee complained. “Just because a person is a criminal doesn’t mean he doesn’t deserve a voice in government.” “A democracy must reflect the views of all the people—honest and dishonest alike—if it is to be truly representative,” Miller argued. “Disenfranchising a segment of the...

SAYRE, OKLA. -- A brawl among California inmates housed in a prison in Oklahoma because of overcrowded lockups back home resulted in 46 injuries, authorities said Wednesday. The fighting broke out Tuesday at the North Fork Correctional Facility in Sayre, Okla., about 130 miles west of Oklahoma City. The prison holds 2,381 inmates, all from California, .. Inmates were involved in fights at various locations throughout the 2,500-bed, medium-security prison, .. Jackson said 46 inmates were hurt, 30 of whom were treated at the prison. Sixteen were taken to hospitals, three in critical condition. The injuries ranged from "normal scratches...

SAN FRANCISCO -- San Francisco's biggest gang trial in many years ended today when a jury convicted six men of racketeering and conspiracy as members of MS-13, a crime organization that waged war against rivals and defectors in San Francisco's Mission District and was found responsible for at least three 2008 murders. A seventh defendant, Walter Cruz-Zavala, was acquitted. The six men face up to life in prison when sentenced Nov. 30. Jurors deliberated for a week after a federal court trial that lasted more than four months. Prosecutors portrayed the young men as leaders or soldiers of a heavily...

On Tuesday, Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal released the results of a survey that he had requested from the state agriculture commissioner on farm labor shortages in Georgia. The survey found that there are approximately 11,080 unfilled farm jobs in the state. In response to the report, Deal suggested that people who are on criminal probation could fill the job openings: “There are 100,000 probationers statewide, 8,000 of which are in the Southwest region of the state and 25 percent of which are unemployed.” According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, although probationers in Georgia are required to find employment if possible, state...

“To comply with the PLRA, a court must set a population limit at the highest level consistent with an efficacious remedy, and it must order the population reduction to be achieved in the shortest period of time reasonably consistent with public safety.”

RIYADH: A US court has convicted Pete Seda, cofounder of the Riyadh-based Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation in Oregon, of tax fraud and conspiracy, while another US court has dismissed the foundation's co-director Soliman AlButhi in the 9/11 terror-funding case filed by the families of victims of the attacks. "Such judgments indicate a sharp contrast in the American position and explicitly explain how Islamophobia is on parade in the US," said Thomas H. Nelson, the attorney representing AlButhi.

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- A local nonprofit organization is looking for ex-convicts to help clean up oil washing ashore in the Panhandle. Operation New Hope, which helps men and women recently released from prison find work, has a new contract that allows it to help hundreds of ex-offenders get a second chance. On Friday, instructors explained to a group of ex-offenders what to expect when they leave Sunday for Pensacola. They have their gear, gloves and 40 hours of beach cleanup training under their belts.

RIYADH -- Judicial officials say a Saudi court has convicted four women and 11 men for mingling at a party and sentenced them to flogging and prison terms. The men, who are between 30 and 40 years old, and three of the women, who are under the age of 30, were sentenced to an unspecified number of lashes and one or two year prison terms each. The fourth woman, a minor, was sentenced to 80 lashes and was not sent to prison.

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- A Saudi court convicted a man and sentenced him to four months in prison and 90 lashes for kissing a woman in a mall, a government-owned daily reported Thursday. Saudi religious police arrested the man and two women after seeing them on mall cameras "engaging in immoral movements in front of other shoppers," the Al-Yom newspaper said. The man, who is in his 20s, was seen with a woman "sitting on one of the chairs, exchanging kisses and hugs." It was unclear what the other woman was doing. Neither the man nor the women were identified...

Two escaped convicts have dodged a huge manhunt - by disguising themselves as sheep. The pair dressed in full sheepskin fleeces, complete with heads, to lie low among farm flocks. Robbers Maximiliano Pereyra...and Ariel Diaz...stole the sheep hides from a ranch after breaking out of an Argentinian maximum security prison a week ago. And they have managed to evade the 300 cops on their trail - despite locals seeing them running through fields at night. Police say spotting the pair among thousands of sheep is "almost impossible." But one warned: "They can't pull the wool over our eyes forever."