Across the Country

COLORADO
February 6 - A suspected serial rapist was formally charged in Denver with sexually assaulting and kidnapping a woman in 2005. An extensive investigation into the incident yielded no results at the time, but a DNA profile from the case was matched in January 2008 to a prison inmate who was then arrested at a corrections facility in Centennial. He has already been charged with two other similar attacks in Denver and is a suspect in several similar attacks in Aurora.

GEORGIA
February 8 - An attorney charged with smuggling a 14-inch saw blade to a jailed client was sentenced to five years in prison. The attorney was representing an inmate against charges of armed robbery, aggravated assault and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony.

IDAHO
January 23 - The governor began selling a plan to lawmakers to let prison companies own and operate for-profit lockups in Idaho, arguing it would be better for corporations to pay upfront costs of housing a growing inmate population rather than the state selling bonds for such projects, as it's been done in the past.

INDIANA
January 25 - An Indiana state prison that was the site of a riot last year involving inmates from Arizona was locked down after three officers were treated for minor injuries in a fight with prisoners. At least some of the inmates involved in the fight were from Arizona, according to a corrections department spokesperson.

January 14 - State police and prison internal affairs officers were investigating the assault of a Westville Correctional Facility secretary by an inmate. The secretary was treated at a hospital following the attack and released later that evening, said a prison spokesman, who would not elaborate on the nature of the attack that occurred in a stairwell of the prison's administration building.

MARYLAND
February 7 - Two prison inmates convicted of stabbing two correctional officers will be spending the rest of their lives behind bars. At the now-closed Maryland House of Correction in Jessup, the inmates stabbed the two correctional officers with eight-inch homemade knives in March 2006. Both inmates were already serving lengthy prison sentences for murder. They will now serve consecutive life sentences after completing their current sentences.

January 28 - A judge sentenced a state prison inmate to life without parole for murdering a correctional officer while escaping from a hospital two years ago. After shooting the officer in the head with the officer's gun as he pleaded for his life, the inmate took a hospital visitor hostage briefly and then carjacked a taxicab.

MASSACHUSETTS
January 29 - One of the instigators of a violent melee at Middleton Jail in June was sentenced to six to eight years in state prison. The 25-year-old inmate pleaded guilty to assault and battery with a dangerous weapon-a metal waist chain he used to attack an officer in the early morning. The officer suffered a serious head wound and was one of five officers injured.

January 18 - Inmates in Massachusetts prisons will have to wait until they are released before they can see movies like Sweeney Todd and Atonement. A prison ban on movies rated R, NC-17, and X was upheld this week by a federal judge who said the policy served a legitimate purpose by shielding prisoners from depictions of sex and violence. The judge rejected an argument that the Department of Corrections ban violated the constitutional rights of inmates.

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