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.
This time around Democrat Diane Denish claimed the eye-popping contributions and raised the most out-of-state money. But two six-figure contributions and nearly $600,000 in out-of-state money wasn’t enough to power Denish past Republican Susana Martinez in dollars raised during the waning days of the 2010 New Mexico governor’s race, campaign finance reports filed Thursday show.
A powerful state senator lashed out against the corrections secretary this week as lawmakers eyed $18 million in penalties Williams decided not to levy against private prison companies, including his former employer. Williams has said his decision was based on the good job the two companies had done operating four facilities.
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 state appears to have been within its rights last year to repeatedly penalize two private prison operators for letting their vacancy rates hover above a 10 percent trigger in their contracts, state records show.
By contract New Mexico can…
Think Progress, the blog of the left-leaning Center for American Progress Action Fund, has picked up on NMI’s story about New Mexico Corrections Secretary Joe Williams not penalizing two private prison operators despite repeated contract obligations. But Think…
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.
The American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico is suing a privately-run prison in Clayton for imposing cruel and unusual punishment, charging that in December, 2008, prison guards kept seven nude or semi-nude prisoners locked in a cold…
