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.
The U.S. has 5 percent of the world’s population but a quarter of its of its prisoners, according to a new report on the economic impact of the corrections industry released to lawmakers Tuesday by the Congressional Research Service (CRS). Few facets of the national economy are untouched by the burgeoning prison industry, the report concludes.
The corrections sector directly employs 770,000 people, a number that is expected to grow by up to 16 percent by 2016, the report states — despite modest declines in U.S. prison populations since 2008.
Prisons also fuel a multi-billion dollar contract services industry that employs tens of thousands more to build prisons and provide inmates with health care, education, and food, according to the report.
In contrast, the entire U.S. automobile industry employs about 880,000 workers, the report states.
Most new prisons built nationwide between 2000 and 2005 are run by private companies. Corporation-owned prisons now house 16 percent of federal prisoners, the report states.
Because the U.S. Census counts inmates as residents of the counties in which they are incarcerated, prisons can dramatically distort the distribution of federal programs for which funding formulas include population, the report notes.
CRS reports are prepared as primers for U.S. senators and representatives, but are not intended for public release. But the Federation of American Scientists’ Project on Government Secrecy and Open CRS routinely obtain and post them on the web.
