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 Corrections Department made $3.7 million in questionable payments to three contractors from fiscal years 2007 to 2010, according to an audit released Wednesday by State Auditor Hector Balderas.
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…
The New Mexico Corrections Department has received $500,000 in federal funding to help maximum-security prisoners transition back into their communities after their release, according to the office of U.S. Sen. Jeff Bingaman.
The money will help the state agency…
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.
Correctional officers earned $7.2 million in overtime last year, mostly working longer hours to make up for a system-wide staffing shortage at New Mexico’s prisons. In July, the Roswell Correctional Center, which reported a 27 percent vacancy rate, had to ask the state’s highly trained Special Operations Response Team to swoop in to search for contraband and to avert possible violence among that facility’s inmates.
At the Roswell Correctional Center, one in every four correctional officer jobs is vacant. That staffing shortage recently led the New Mexico Corrections Department to send its highly trained Special Operations Response Team to search for contraband and to avert possible violence among that facility’s inmates, an agency spokeswoman confirmed.
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.
O.K., we’re watching the early fireworks in the New Mexico gubernatorial race, which promises drama, election-year anger and all sorts of interesting factors. But out in California, the race to replace The Governator in Sacramento already is generating superlatives.…
Breathe easy all you New Mexicans who are traveling during the first part of 2010. The Obama administration will abandon a Dec. 31 deadline for states to tighten security requirements for driver’s licenses under the 2005 Real ID law,…
