It’s a postcard-perfect day on Suomenlinna Island, in Helsinki’s South Harbor. Warm for the first week of June, day trippers mix with Russian, Dutch, and Chinese tourists sporting sun shades and carrying cones of pink ice cream. “Is this the prison?” asks a 40-something American woman wearing cargo pants and a floral sleeveless blouse.

The worst day of Brad McGahey’s life was the day a judge decided to spare him from prison. McGahey was 23 with dreams of making it big in rodeo, maybe starring in his own reality TV show. With a 1.5 GPA, he’d barely graduated from high school. He had two kids and mounting child support debt. Then he got busted for buying a stolen horse trailer, fell behind on court fines and blew off his probation officer.

A drone sneaked contraband into a Michigan prison in May, but the breach went undetected for nearly two months, according to State Police documents The Detroit News obtained through an open records request. Michigan Department of Corrections spokesman Chris Gautz said Friday that an after-the-fact review of video surveillance discovered that prisoners at Ionia’s Richard A. Handlon Correctional Facility recovered two packages dropped by a drone. It is the first time that law enforcement and state prison officials have confirmed a successful drone delivery of contraband to Michigan inmates.

Shari Webber-Dunn, an inmate serving a murder charge in Kansas, said her First Amendment rights were violated by "Christian propaganda" imposed by the all-female prison. Now, she's suing department administrators to have it removed. The lawsuit, filed Wednesday, alleged that the Topeka Correctional Facility in Kansas unconstitutionally embraces Christianity by displaying an eight-foot-tall wooden cross in its basement, publically posting prison-related prayers, soliciting book donations for a spiritual library and offering prayer request submission on a Christian bulletin board.

A Wilmington man will spend at least 80 years in prison for kidnapping a 6-year-old girl a year ago, sexually assaulting her and leaving her chained to a tree in the woods. Douglas Nelson Edwards, 47, a registered sex offender, was found guilty Wednesday of attempted murder, kidnapping, assault with a deadly weapon inflicting serious bodily injury, statutory sex offense and taking indecent liberties with a minor.

Former New York Congressman Anthony Weiner "deserves time in prison" — about two years — for sexual communications with a 15-year-old girl, prosecutors said in a court filing Wednesday before his sentencing next week. In a submission last week, defense lawyers argued that Weiner — who is in the midst of getting divorced from Huma Abedin, a Hillary Clinton aide — should be spared jail time because the teenager at the center of the case wanted to write a tell-all book and hoped to influence the presidential election.

An Ohio man has been sentenced to 35 years in prison without the chance of parole for breaking into two homes and abducting and raping a 6-year-old girl and attempting to abduct a 10-year-old girl. Thirty-year-old Justin Christian pleaded guilty Thursday to charges including rape, kidnapping and burglary. He declined to say anything before a judge sentenced him.

This man essentially time travelled 44 years. (Dec. 23, 2016)

Britain’s practice of transporting convicts to American colonies was a fearsome punishment, but not for the chronic criminal James Dalton. By Christine Ro.

A case in Baltimore — in which two men were convicted of the same murder and cleared by DNA 20 years later — shows how far prosecutors will go to preserve a conviction.

Four California sheriff’s deputies have been accused of “sadistic and terrorizing acts” against inmates, including encouraging prisoners to throw urine and feces at each other, laughing at an assault victim seeking help, strangling an inmate into unconsciousness and intimidating witnesses. The felony assault charges against four Alameda County deputies, accused of victimizing eight prisoners, have provided a window into the violent abuse and misconduct that...

A little bit of nature can calm even the most stressed populations of people, according to a study conducted on prisoners in solitary confinement. In the experiment, researchers found that prisoners who watched videos with nature scenes felt less stressed and weren’t as violent as those who didn’t. The team, led by ecologist Nalini Nadkarni at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, published their findings on 1 September in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.

Francis Rawls, a former Philadelphia cop, will remain in jail for refusing to decrypt a hard drive federal investigators found in his home two years ago during a child abuse investigation.

59 new alleged Ponzi schemes were revealed in 2016. This is down from 61 schemes uncovered in 2015 and 70 schemes in 2014. However, the $2.3 billion potential loss revealed in 2016 is far greater than the $800 million total from 2015. 67 individuals were sentenced in 2016 for Ponzi-related violations.

Can humane prisons work in America? A red state aims to find out.

A West Virginia man has pleaded guilty to killing a fellow prison inmate after a dispute over a Bible verse. WCHS-TV reports Timothy Parsons pleaded guilty to the stabbing death of Eugene Anderson. Prosecutors say Parsons defeated Anderson in a game of Bible knowledge at the Mount Olive Correctional Institute.

At least 28 prisoners were killed in a brutal prison fight on Thursday in the Mexican Pacific resort of Acapulco, in one of the worst outbreaks of violence in the country’s troubled penal system in recent years. Acapulco is the biggest city in Guerrero, one of Mexico’s most lawless states and a center of opium poppy production that has been a major concern to US officials.

The six Georgia inmates who jumped into action and saved the life of a deputy who passed out will get a reward of shorter sentences, the sheriff said Tuesday. "Anytime we have a trustee or inmate crew, that goes beyond normal duties, we cut them some extra time off," Polk County Sheriff, Johnny Moats, said.

The Department of Homeland Security has called for more immigration detention facilities to open along the US-Mexico border. And negotiations between a private prison company and the government have already begun in the Rio Grande Valley. By Reynaldo Leanos Jr.

On Wednesday, a jury ordered the Milwaukee County [Wisconsin] jail, run by Sheriff David Clarke, who recently announced he has been appointed to the Department of Homeland Security, to pay the victim $6.7 million. By Gabby Bess.