El Rito Media News Services

A bill that would expand restrictions on the placement of inmates in solitary confinement in New Mexico’s prisons and jails spurred strong reactions Tuesday as former inmates and correctional officers sounded off on opposite sides of the issue.

“It’s easy to say solitary confinement is necessary when you are the one locking the door,” said Christopher Herrera, who discussed his experience being incarcerated during a House Consumer & Public Affairs Committee. “It only causes more violence.”

Offering personal experiences and standing in opposition, some correctional officers in the state who attended the committee meeting wearing uniforms said they had personally been assaulted while working the job and maintained the bill would make their jobs more dangerous and difficult while also making prison populations less safe.

House Bill 533 — sponsored by Rep. Tara Lujan, D-Santa Fe — would lower the threshold for what is considered solitary confinement from 22 hours per day to 17 hours per day without rehabilitative programming. The legislation would also raise the existing statutory restriction on housing individuals under 18 years of age in solitary confinement to those under 21 years of age, according to a Legislative Finance Committee analysis, while expanding that restriction to those over 55 years of age as well.

Under the bill, pregnant and postpartum inmates, as well as individuals identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer, may not be placed in restricted housing involuntarily or for purposes of protective custody.

“It creates a lot of strange, sort of illogical provisions [for] us,” said Alisha Tafoya Lucero, cabinet secretary of the New Mexico Corrections Department, prior to the committee meeting. “A few of the things it does: it doesn’t allow people under the age of 21 or over the age of 55, or anybody who has any sort of LGBTQ status, to be placed in any restrictive housing for any time at all.”

“It essentially takes away our management tools,” added Tafoya Lucero, who opposes the bill.

House Bill 533 would also impose new limits on the duration of restricted housing. Under the proposal, no inmate may be placed in restricted housing for more than 15 consecutive days or a cumulative total exceeding 90 days within a 12-month period, the Legislative Finance Committee analysis states.

If an inmate is held beyond these limits, under the bill, the warden or jail administrator must document the justification and develop a transition plan to remove the inmate from restricted housing as soon as feasible.

The committee opted not to vote on the bill to allow Lujan to work more with the Corrections Department, as well as other stakeholders, to refine the intent of the legislation, possibly in an interim committee context after the session. Lujan said she wanted to have the conversations regarding solitary confinement, and had Tafoya Lucero testify, though the cabinet secretary opposes the bill, an unusual structuring of her presentation of the bill during the committee.

“There’s a lot, a lot, a lot of issues in here, and if you want to do this in the future, I would recommend that you sit down with all these people that work there [at corrections facilities] and they can give you firsthand experience,” said Rep. Stefani Lord, R-Sandia Park.

“The intention is always to move the legislation. But to give a voice to this issue is very uplifting,” Lujan said following the meeting. “We obviously don’t like the result that we got but we are going to keep moving forward.”

She characterized the bill as one that would bring New Mexico into alignment with “international standards” in terms of the treatment of prisoners.

Some members of the audience at meeting backed the bill, arguing solitary confinement is an inhumane practice that has bred considerable harm in the state and does not deter violent behavior. Some supporters of the bill sometimes called solitary confinement “torture.”

“People should not be tortured. We need you to understand that we do torture people here in New Mexico,” said Selinda Guerrero of Millions for Prisoners New Mexico. “… It’s called solitary confinement, and it’s done in our name using our tax dollars behind closed doors.”

Jessica Vigil-Richards, warden of Central New Mexico Correctional Facility in Los Lunas, said correctional officers in the state face hardships when they are “assaulted” and “battered” by members of the inmate population.

“It’s just a tool that we use to help rehabilitate that behavior,” said Vigil-Richards in an interview prior to the meeting, adding “As a warden, it just ties our hands in different realms of corrections.”