Carter: Soldier heroically entered Kurdish-IS firefight
The U.S. soldier fatally wounded in a hostage rescue mission in Iraq heroically inserted himself into a firefight to defend Kurdish soldiers, even though the plan called for the Kurds to do the fighting, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Friday.
Pentagon: American killed in raid to free Iraqis held by IS
Acting on word of an “imminent mass execution” by Islamic State militants, dozens of U.S. special operations troops and Iraqi forces raided a northern Iraqi compound Thursday, freeing approximately 70 Iraqi prisoners in an operation that saw the first American killed in combat in the country since the U.S. campaign against IS began in 2014, officials said.
Mississippi to end prisoners’ conjugal visits
Mississippi prisoners will no longer be allowed to have conjugal visits, starting early next year, Corrections Commissioner Chris Epps said.
Taliban wants exchange of prisoners
The Afghan Taliban are ready to free a U.S. soldier held captive since 2009 in exchange for five of their senior operatives imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay as a conciliatory gesture, a senior spokesman for the group said Thursday.
Groups say conditions in Miss. prison ‘barbaric’
Inmates in a Mississippi prison are isolated for long periods in “barbaric” conditions, sometimes in filthy cells with rats and broken toilets, and they are denied access to medical and mental health care, a federal lawsuit filed Thursday said.
Monroe Co. hopes to get federal prisoners
Monroe County supervisors have told Sheriff Cecil Cantrell to work out a deal to house federal prisoners in the local detention center.
Shivs, more on display at historic Philly prison
A mounted wooden fish. Dog figurines. Colorful soap carvings of clowns and Santa. A wallet made of interwoven cigarette packs. It sounds like a bad garage sale — until you get to the shivs. And the century-old mug shot book. And the inmate death ledger.
At Iowa prison, a lonely battle against sex movies
Administrators let offenders at one of Iowa’s most dangerous prison units watch violent and sexually explicit movies and TV shows for years, despite repeated complaints from a female officer who said it encouraged inmates to sexually harass her.
Incarcerated veterans train dogs for other vets
Hazard Wilson’s new cellmate is a hairy bundle of energy whose playful zeal can’t be contained by steel doors: a five-month-old golden retriever. Yardley is one of three canines assigned since September to inmates at a maximum-security prison in western Maryland for training as service dogs for disabled military veterans.
Federal prisons urged to grant more early releases
For humanitarian and economic reasons, the federal Bureau of Prisons should grant more early releases to incapacitated and terminally ill prisoners, two advocacy groups say in a report depicting current policies as sometimes “cruel as well as senseless.”