The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

That law calls for the state to release some nonviolent inmates who have six months or less left on their sentences when prisons are overcrowded for more than two months.

The state has “mandatory, nondiscretionary duties” to follow that law, said a legal document signed by Hall.

The women’s prison for the past six months has had as many as 60 inmates more than its 597-inmate capacity, Peter Simonson, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in New Mexico, said Wednesday.

“The sewage is backed up so bad that guards have to wear masks to protect them from the fumes,” Simonson said. The overcrowding has severely impacted medical and dental services at the prison, he said.

Hall set an April 18 hearing to give the state a chance to show why it shouldn’t start releasing inmates.

Corrections spokeswoman Tia Bland said Wednesday that the overcrowding at the women’s prison will be alleviated by late June, when the department opens Camino Nuevo, a facility in Albuquerque that used to house juvenile offenders.

Initially, Camino Nuevo — which is to be operated by the Tennessee-based Corrections Corporation of America — will house 48 female inmates, Bland said. Eventually, the new prison will hold 198 female inmates.

Simonson said June is too late. “The (Grants) prison has been overcrowded for more than a year. The problems need to be addressed right now,” he said.

The ACLU was one of the parties that filed the legal action to force the state to comply with the law. Another was Rep. Mimi Stewart, D-Albuquerque , who sponsored the bill that eventually became law.

“We are specifying and targeting nonviolent offenders who are model
inmates,” Stewart said in an interview Wednesday. Anyone considered for early release would have to have a parole plan, she said.

“We can be intelligent about it, or we can build more prisons for the
benefit of private corporations who have a profit motive,” Stewart said.

The law requires the secretary of corrections to give the Corrections
Population Control Commission a list of nonviolent offenders who are
within 180 days of being released.

The commission, according to the law, is required to approve people from the list for emergency release to relieve the crowded conditions.

Stewart’s bill passed the Legislature with bipartisan support and was
signed by a Republican governor, Stewart noted.

Nevertheless, releasing inmates early could become a political hot potato in an election year.

Last month several state Republican leaders blasted Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democrat, for not building enough prisons — which, they claimed, contributed to the killing of a Bernalillo County sheriff’s deputy allegedly by a paroled inmate.

State GOP Chairman Allen Weh claimed Richardson “put into place a board and a policy directed at releasing prisoners , rather than building new prisons, as the solution for New Mexico’s increasing inmate population.”

Corrections Secretary Joe Williams responded that there is no
early-release program in place — even though prison officials considered such a plan in the early days of the Richardson administration.