American death-row inmate Hank Skinner was slowly chewing his way through his "last meal" when the news came through.

Forty-three of NZ's most dangerous criminals have been convicted of serious violent offences committed while they were already on parole.

A Corrections staff member tried to hide his poor supervision of a yard where inmates tipped over a crane, and from where one later escaped.

The ASB bank investment adviser who stole $17.8m charged his parents interest on a loan to move into a retirement home - then asked for the money back when his fraud was discovered.

Japanese media have expressed frustration at a NZ activist's anti-whaling protests, with one top newspaper accusing him of terrorism.

John Key says the Govt can not intervene in Japan's legal processes to help anti-whaling campaigner Peter Bethune.

A British man who has been on hunger strike in a US prison since September 2007 can legally be force-fed by prison authorities, a court has ruled.

Rapper Lil Wayne, his lawyer Stacey Richman by his side, listened to the judge in a Manhattan criminal court sentence him yesterday to a year in jail for having a loaded gun on his tour bus.

The proposed three strikes bill would be grossly unjust and could result in an 11,000 per cent rise in time spent in prisons, an independent organisation on crime says.

A stabbing victim is leaving the country and fears for his life because his attacker is about to be released from prison without having done any rehabilitation programme.

A New Zealand man who tried to rape a young girl after travelling to England to try to save his marriage has been sentenced to 15 and a half years in jail.