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 New Mexico Department of Corrections is fining GEO Group, a Florida-based private prison operator, $1.1 million for understaffing one of its prisons.
The private prison industry, including a couple of familiar names in New Mexico, had a hand in shaping Arizona’s controversial illegal immigration law, which stands to benefit them financially, NPR reports today.
As NPR reported, “the law could send…
Over the past four years New Mexico has given up more than $18 million to two private prison operators in the form of never-assessed penalties despite repeated contractual violations, a new legislative report says. The state has not regularly tracked vacancy rates at private prisons and had not even calculated how much the private prison companies might have owed if the state has penalized them for not having enough staff.
The New Mexico Corrections Department has not fined two private prison operators for years despite repeated contract violations, costing the state potentially millions of dollars in uncollected penalties, state officials have told The Independent. That has put New Mexico Corrections Secretary Joe Williams on a collision course with state lawmakers. Some legislators say the issue of uncollected penalties is finally coming to a head as New Mexico faces economic difficulties.
Corrections Corporation of America, a Tennessee-based for-profit company that operates a women’s prison in Grants, wants to fulfill its obligation for vocational programming with a cosmetology program. But a former cabinet corrections secretary in charge of prison reform and re-entry says there aren’t enough jobs for hair stylists out there and the company should focus on education or training for a high-growth industry.
Two of New Mexico’s 10 prisons would be shuttered, hundreds of non-violent offenders released and dozens of people could lose their jobs if the state’s prisons were cut by 7.6 percent, Corrections Secretary Joe Williams said Wednesday. The worst-case scenario caused some to speculate that the Richardson administration is laying the groundwork to veto provisions in the budget bill requiring the 7.6 percent cut.
