Inmates

SALT LAKE CITY — A shortage of open beds at Utah halfway houses has kept dozens of inmates in prison past their scheduled release.

FARR WEST -- The city is looking cleaner thanks to the efforts of inmates who have been cleaning along the freeway and by the recreation center, according to Councilman Lee Dickemore.

“There is a significant improvement, and they have cleaned around City Hall,” said Dickemore, who also said the inmates would be finishing a project at the city shop that scouts had started.

VERNAL — Two former Uintah County inmates say they were shocked by a car battery as an initiation into a jail work crew.

FARMINGTON — Samantha Smothers hopes she will be able to get into cosmetology school. Now, she has a high school diploma to help her reach that goal.

But first, for the next three months, Smothers will be finishing her sentence at Davis County Jail.

COMAYAGUA, Honduras -- The prisoners whose scorched bodies were carried out piece by piece Thursday morning from a charred Honduran prison had been locked inside an overcrowded penitentiary where most inmates had never been charged, let alone convicted, according to an internal Honduran government report obtained by The Associated Press.

BLYTHE, Calif. -- Rolando Rodriguez, an inmate at Ironwood State Prison, got the best birthday present he could ask for three days before he turned 36. His 16-year-old daughter called to say she was proud of him.

Rodriguez credits his daughter, who was 7 when he was incarcerated for assault with a deadly weapon against a police officer, as the reason he joined a training program at Ironwood to become a certified Braille transcriber.

SALT LAKE CITY -- A judge has dismissed a federal class-action lawsuit filed by inmates against the Cache County Jail over a policy change that limits most mail to postcards.