Less accountability, higher rates of transmission and death
Overview on NM Pandemic Policy
When the Covid-19 pandemic arrived in the US in early 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) identified crowded living quarters as posing a high risk of transmission. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) shared guidance for administrators, operators, owners, and people living in “apartments, condos, student housing, staff housing, transitional housing, domestic violence housing, assisted living, etc.” State and federal organizations offered resources to many facilities to incentivize the creation and enforcement of stringent protocol. The New Mexico State Government began to require entities to produce and abide by specific Covid-19 protocol plans. In these guidelines, state and federal prison populations were not referenced.
The New Mexico Department of Health (NMDOH) deferred to the New Mexico Department of Corrections (NMDOC) for individual handling of the pandemic procedures. While this is not uncommon among state agencies, NMDOC facilities operate with a lack of procedural transparency. They maintain lower standards than congregate-care facilities, public and higher education, and other high-risk transmission climates. Prison protocols available to the public indicate limited plans to reduce transmission among incarcerated populations, provide attentive healthcare, and release anyone vulnerable to severe disease. Transmission and death data demonstrates NMDOC’s failure to follow health protocols: incarcerated peoples’ risk of getting sick and dying is nearly four times the general population’s rate (Prison Policy Initiative 2021).
State infection data:
Source: The Marshall Project and NMDOH
As of May 1, New Mexico has the 12th highest rate of prison infections in the US, with a reported 2,983 cases, or roughly 4,528 per 100,000 people (The Marshall Project 2021). At a rate of 43 per 100,000, it leads the nation in per capita deaths among incarcerated people. Under the US constitution, incarcerated people have fundamental health, safety, and human dignity rights. NMDOC violated these rights in facilities throughout the state.
As a state with an overall vulnerable population, New Mexico has prioritized COVID-19 mitigation and containment with some of the nation’s strictest precautionary measures and efficient vaccine rollout. These measures have mitigated disease and death amongst the population in general, but incarcerated people continue to see high rates of infection and mortality:
Source: The Marshall Project and NMDOH
As of May 2021, 900 of the 1101 residents incarcerated at The Metropolitan Detention Center had tested positive for COVID-19. Due to the transient nature of residents at MDC, these numbers do not translate into overall facilities infection rates. Despite high rates of infection noted across incarcerated populations, actual infections are most likely under-reported.
According to legal sources working with the people incarcerated at MDC, inadequate isolation and testing practices meant that the entire population was likely exposed once the outbreak started. The unsatisfactory quarantine and testing policy included known asymptomatic infectious carriers in the general population, suggesting that more residents were infected than were tested.
Prison systems are not equipped to handle highly infectious diseases in any capacity. As the threat of contagious disease increases with globalization and climate change, communities must confront human rights violations within our current criminal justice system (Keil and Ali 2007).
State Releases
Pandemic policy changes implemented to protect the incarcerated have not sufficiently addressed the violation of human rights caused by keeping people in cages during a highly infectious pandemic. A single substantial state order: Executive Order 2020-021, signed on March 11, aimed to commute sentences that met specific guidelines. These guidelines include individuals within 30 days of their release date for non-violent offenses. By June 2020, state facilities reported that 71 people were released to reduce the spread of Covid-19. It is unclear if Order 2020-021 resulted in any further releases. While 2020 prison admissions fell nearly 4.5% from 2019, declines in incarcerated populations have fallen in New Mexico for several years. New Mexico has not restricted prison admissions or ICE detainment during the pandemic at a policy level. Even worse, the Management and Training Company (MTC) operating Otero County Processing Center attempted to incarcerate more migrants to increase their population through the pandemic (Dunlap 2020). MTC cited open beds and pandemic releases as a primary rationale for increasing migrant detentions.
Ongoing action
Speaking with lawyers, advocates, and incarcerated people in New Mexico during the pandemic has revealed the unhygienic facility settings, inhumane practices, and callous disregard of human life in prisons. Incarcerated residents have filed several human rights violations class-action lawsuits against the state, but courts have found no counts of “cruel or unusual punishment” against the incarcerated. The Governor decided to take no further action. This blog intends to expose the cruel and unusual punishment incarcerated people have faced over the last year.