We’re excited to announce that the Business of Detention project has been selected as a 2009 Finalist in the “Student” category at the South by Southwest Interactive Web Awards. The site will also compete for a People’s Choice Award (the online public’s favorite finalist). Winners are announced March 15, 2009. The Business of Detention project was created by reporters Renee Feltz (’08) and Stokely Baksh (’08), while graduate students at Columbia University’s Graduate of Journalism. Our desire was to create an innovative way to present the business of privatized immigration detention management — using solid reporting skills and pairing that up with video and interactive info graphics. This was also an experiment for us in creating a platform for a news product, that largely went under reported in mainstream news when we started the Corrections Corporation of American investigative project in late 2007. That project became the first investigative-new media project for the University and has since won the Melvin Mencher Award for Superior Reporting and James A. Wechsler Award for National Reporting. WE NEED YOUR HELP! Please visit http://sxsw.com/peoples-choice to vote us for the People’s Choice Award. You can vote once a day until the contest ends! Pass this along and tell ...

Via Democracy Now Tuesday, August 19, 2008: Earlier this month, a thirty-four-year-old Chinese computer engineer, Hiu Lui Ng, who overstayed his visa, died in a Rhode Island immigration detention center. He had cancer in his liver, lung and bones, and a fractured spine. Despite repeated complaints of severe pain, Mr. Ng was refused independent medical evaluation by immigration officials. Before Mr. Ng died on August 6th, he told his sister that the nurses at the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Center in Rhode Island had told him to “stop faking” his illness. We speak to immigration attorney Joshua Bardavid, Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) and Renee Feltz, co-creator of the site BusinessOfDetention.com. We turn now to the sprawling detention system within this country that some have likened to a gulag and a series of domestic Guantanamo Bays: The immigration prisons that over 300,000 people pass through each year. Earlier this month a 34-year old Chinese computer engineer, Hiu Lui Ng, who overstayed his visa died in a Rhode Island immigration detention center. He had cancer in his liver, lung, and bones, and a fractured spine. Despite repeated complaints of severe pain Mr. Ng was refused independent medical evaluation by immigration officials, the New York Times reported. ...