Prisons in the u.s. 
Real Cost of Prisons Project
This activist group has been working to end mass incarceration in the U.S. since 2003. Their website includes a blog that is updated almost daily, with news related to the prison industry from across the country, and a comic book called Prison Town: Paying the Price, which is available for purchase from AK Press.
The site also features the original article that inspired "Prison Town, USA." Author Joelle Fraser writes that "Bruce Springsteen never lived in Susanville, but if he had, he would have written a song about it, about the mills closed, and the mines, the army depot and about how everything the town relied on had slipped away like a woman who had seen something better on the other side of the road." (PDF)
New York Times: Almost 10% of All Prisoners Now Serving Life Terms
This article explains why the number of inmates serving life sentences skyrocketed between 1992 and 2002, even as overall crime rates declined. (May 12, 2004; registration required.)
Open Society Institute: Big Prisons, Small Towns
The Open Society Institute and The MacArthur Foundation funded this comprehensive report on how prisons affect local rural economies. The study found that counties that had prisons did not see a significant shift in their unemployment rates. (2003, PDF)
Bureau of Justice Statistics: Correctional Populations
This chart from Bureau of Justice Statistics, the numbers warehouse at the U.S. Department of Justice, confirms that since 1980 the number of people "under correctional supervision" has risen from 1.8 million to over 7 million.
Urban Institute: The New Landscape of Imprisonment
This report maps the prison expansion and explains the impact on rural communities when inmates from cities are incarcerated far from home. It focuses on the ten states that have seen the greatest surge in prisons since 1980. (April 29, 2004)
Federal Bureau of Prisons
The Federal Bureau of Prisons has a handy clickable map that shows all of the federal correctional facilities throughout the U.S. The site also posts regulations and policies that shed light on the day-to-day operations of federal correctional facilities.
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