Costa Rica's notorious San Sebastián prison must be closed within 18 months, according to a judge's ruling that cited rampant overcrowding and inhumane conditions at the prison.

The founder of Liberty Reserve has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for using his Costa Rica-based virtual currency business to help cyber criminals launder money, the U.S. Department of Justice reported.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. President Barack Obama on Tuesday presented a long-awaited roadmap to close the controversial U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, saying it was time to shutter a facility that betrayed U.S. interests and values.

MANAGUA, Nicaragua – Nicaragua has released more than 8,000 convicts to parole and sent 94 foreigners to finish sentences in their home countries since 2014, easing overcrowding in prisons, the government said Monday.

When Cyrus Sepehr was thrown into a preventive prison in Costa Rica under suspicion of fraud, he could still walk. But in just four months he's been relegated to a wheel chair, and the left side of his body is now paralyzed.

After 16 years of rubber-stamp impotence, Venezuela's opposition plans to use its overwhelming electoral victory to free political prisoners -- including its most charismatic leader -- and offer President Nicolás Maduro six months to take painful economic steps or face removal.

In an interview with The Tico Times, former Medellín cartel hit man John Jairo Velázquez Vásquez, aka “Popeye,” says he loves Costa Rica, and his former boss used to park his drug airplanes here.

HAVANA — The Cuban government said it plans to pardon 3,522 prisoners over the next 72 hours as a "humanitarian" gesture ahead of Pope Francis' visit to the island beginning next week. But the announcement appeared to rule out pardons for at least some of the dozens of inmates that rights groups consider political prisoners.

There are few set criteria governing how transgender inmates should be handled by Costa Rican prisons. Many men who identify as women are sent to men's prisons.

GUATEMALA CITY – Former Vice President Roxana Baldetti was formally charged with illicit association, customs fraud and bribery on Tuesday, just days after she was arrested for allegedly helping mastermind a massive customs fraud network known as “La Línea” in tandem with Guatemalan President Otto Pérez Molina.