After being sentenced to three years in prison and a dishonorable discharge, England was incarcerated from September 27, 2005, to March 1, 2007, when she was released on parole.

Born in Ashland, Kentucky,[3] England moved with her family to Fort Ashby, West Virginia, when she was two years old.

[4] England joined the United States Army Reserve in Cumberland in 1999 while she was a junior at Frankfort High School near Short Gap.

England worked as a cashier in an IGA store during her junior year of high school and married a co-worker in 2002, but they later divorced.

[9] England mobilized with her Army Reserve unit and was stationed in Baghdad at the Abu Ghraib prison in March 2003 to perform guard duties.

While formal charges were being prepared for general court-martial, England was transferred to the U.S. military installation at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, on March 18, 2004, because of her pregnancy.

In May 2005, however, Military Judge Colonel James Pohl declared a mistrial on the grounds that he could not accept England's plea of guilty to a charge of conspiring with Graner to maltreat detainees because Graner had testified that he believed that, in placing a tether around a naked detainee's neck and asking England to pose for a photograph with him, he was documenting a legitimate use of force.

[2] Members of the United States Senate have reportedly reviewed additional photographs supplied by the Department of Defense that have not been publicly released.

In a March 2008 interview, England stated in response to a question about these unreleased pictures, "You see the dogs biting the prisoners.

[2] In a May 11, 2004, interview with the Denver CBS owned-and-operated television station KCNC-TV, England reportedly said that she had been "instructed by persons in higher ranks" to commit acts of abuse as a form of psychological operations, and that she should keep doing it, because it worked as intended.

England noted that she felt "weird" when a commanding officer asked her to do such things as "stand there, give the thumbs up, and smile."

[9]In a 16 January 2009 interview with The Guardian, England reiterated: ... that she was goaded into posing for the photographs by her then lover and more senior fellow soldier, Charles Graner.