Maryland is poised to become the first state to ban employers from demanding applicants or workers hand over their log-in information for social media sites like Facebook.

The measure, which handily passed the legislature earlier this month, keeps managers from snooping on password-protected content, a practice advocates of the bill say violates privacy and intimidates job seekers and employees...

For thousands of teens accused of crimes, punishment precedes any conviction in court.

While awaiting trial and ostensibly presumed innocent, they can be held for months or even years in county jails for — and sometimes with — adult suspects.

Federal law aims to shield youths from extended detention and from physical or psychological abuse by adult inmates...

The private company that operates the Kingman prison publicly took full responsibility for last year’s breakout, in which escapees were charged with the murder of an Oklahoma couple.

But behind the scenes, Management & Training Corp. clashed with the state over a litany of problems revealed after the escapes: How to improve lax security. Whether the state should pay the company for empty beds after the state, responding to the breakout, removed high-risk prisoners and quit sending new inmates there...

An escape from a privatized prison in Kingman, Ariz., last year left two people dead and raised questions among some whether the same nightmare scenario could happen in Ohio.

The company that operates the Arizona State Prison Complex at Kingman is Utah-based Management and Training Corp., one of three for-profit corrections companies seeking to buy and operate five Ohio facilities under Gov. John Kasich’s prison privatization plan.

Escapes can and do happen at publicly operated prisons too. But a stunning lack of administrative oversight before the July 30, 2010, escape at Kingman has opponents of the Ohio plan calling it a textbook example of what can go wrong when private companies operate public corrections institutions...

Gary Pullings knows what he wants as a correctional officer at U.S. Penitentiary Atwater.

"I want to carry the damn pepper spray," Pullings said Wednesday.

The 30-year-old former Marine, an Atwater guard since 2006, said he and his fellow officers remain dangerously exposed at the maximum security prison. He contends that staffing is too low and incarceration policies are imperfect…

In agony from abdominal cramps, the California Men's Colony (CMC) inmate was bent over groaning when correctional officers discovered him, and though initially reticent, the man finally confessed to smuggling. He had a contraband cell phone and its charging unit in his rectum.

Surgery was required, but that kind of solution won't help state officials now wrestling with an exploding surge in cell phone possession by inmates of California's state prisons. Last year alone, more than 2,800 cell phones were confiscated from inmates in the system, recipients of ever more clever methods developed to bootleg the devices into the hands of felons. One favored technique uses cereal boxes headed for prison commissaries for concealment.

The problem has become so pervasive that a "Wardens' Advisory Group" has been formed by the California Department of Corrections (CDC) in an attempt to stay current with evolving high technology, and rapidly-adapting low-tech smuggling…

When AT&T came up with the ad phrase "more bars in more places," they probably didn't mean behind the walls of a prison. But contraband cell phones are being found in rising numbers at the California State Prison Solano.

More than 600 cell phones have been confiscated in the last year, most smuggled in on the black market at $500 to $600 each.

"Inmates can be very smart and clever when it comes to getting something they're not supposed to have," said Solano assistant warden Tim Wample…

A state worker recently married to a member of the Mexican Mafia who is in Corcoran State Prison for a gang murder is herself under investigation for downloading more than 5,000 names, addresses and Social Security numbers belonging to Department of Consumer Affairs staff, The Bee has learned.

The Department of Consumer Affairs disclosed that it suffered a data security breach last month, but at the time released few details about the incident.

Officials sent a letter to employees, warning them to watch their credit for signs of identity theft, offering them free credit reports and $25,000 worth of fraud insurance…