With 2.3 million people incarcerated in America’s prison system, prisoners in the United States make up one-quarter of the world’s jail population. Once released, an estimated two out of every three inmates end up back in jail. Prisons have become “warehouses” for the mentally ill. The number of drug offenders in America’s prison system has jumped from 41,000 in 1980 to more than 500,000 today.

The closure of the Brunswick Correctional Center, a target of budget-cutters seven years ago, has area residents upset and worried. It also has angered the county sheriff, who said he had four hours’ notice Tuesday before Gov. Timothy M. Kaine announced that the prison would be closed. “I am profoundly saddened to hear of the closing,“ said Charlette T. Woolridge, the county administrator in Brunswick, located in Southside on the North Carolina border. The closing, she said, “will have devastating effect on Brunswick County’s economy and on the employees that work at that facility.“

Hasan Kalem Zarif found God and an education in prison. Then Gov. Timothy M. Kaine restored his voting rights.

Winter sunshine slices through a narrow security window and falls on Aloysius Joseph Beyrer’s white hair, slight shoulders and the linen covering his fractured hip.

NEWARK, N.J.—The former mayor of Newark, N.J., is due today at a federal prison camp in Petersburg. Sharpe James was to report to begin serving a 27-month sentence. He was convicted earlier this year on corruption charges. James had requested being sent to the prison at Fort Dix so he could be closer to his family, but that was denied. Instead, he will serve his time at the Federal Correctional Institute in Petersburg.

Virginia has among the harshest laws nationwide. Offenders with felony convictions automatically lose the right to vote, although there is a procedure for restoring it under certain conditions.

The Chaplain Service of the Churches of Virginia provides chaplains to Virginia’s prisons and juvenile correctional centers.