I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
New Mexico’s total prison population stood at 6,404 Thursday. That’s 480 fewer prisoners than in August 2006, when the number of offenders behind bars peaked at 6,887, according to New Mexico Corrections Department spokeswoman Tia Bland.
Thursday’s population, spread across the state’s 10 detention facilities, means that the number of offenders remains stable after going on a 2 1/2-year slide.
This is not shocking news.The dip in the prison population was first noted publicly in 2007. It came after 25 years of the prison population increasing.
The drop in the state’s prison population comes at a time that other states are grappling with swelling prison populations that are applying budgetary pressure on their respective states.
The New Mexico Sentencing Commission, in a report released in July 2008, noted that during the first six months of 2007, the prison population increased in 41 states and declined in 8 states. New Mexico was one of the 8 declining states, also including Iowa, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Vermont and Washington.
Since that report’s release, the state has opened a new secure facility in Clayton.
New Mexico began “moving inmates into the Northeast New Mexico Detention Facility in August 4, 2008,” Bland said in an e-mail message. “NENMDF’s population today is 557. There are 626 available beds.”
