By Phaedra Haywood
The Santa Fe New Mexican
GRANTS, N.M. — State prison officials have been caught “double-celling” prisoners at Western New Mexico Correctional Facility in Grants, in violation of longstanding population controls designed to prevent crowding after the bloody Santa Fe penitentiary riot of 1980, a recent federal court settlement shows.
Double-celling is when two prisoners are housed in a cell built for one, and generally means those prisoners are living in a room that is less than 120 square feet and usually contains a toilet.
“Imagine living in the bathroom with another person around the clock,” said Mark Donatelli, one of the attorneys who was appointed to represent thousands of medium- and maximum-security prisoners after the Santa Fe prison riot.
The practice was prohibited under terms of the Duran Decree, which the state Department of Corrections agreed to following the riots in order to address poor living conditions, many related to crowding in the state prisons. Severe crowding was cited as a major contributor to the Santa Fe riot, in which 33 inmates died.
Donatelli said that it appears that, without the knowledge of current top corrections officials, double-celling has been used for years in Grants and affected hundreds of prisoners.
The lawyer said he and co-counsel Peter Cubra were surprised when they heard complaints from prisoners about the practice last year. When they got the allegations in writing in December, he said, they decided to investigate by asking for a tour of the Grants prison.
When they toured the facility in February, Donatelli said, “We found it to be true. It wasn’t just a few cells, they were planning to do the whole facility.”
After seeing the bunks bolted to the walls of single cells, Donatelli said, he and Cubra petitioned for an injunction on behalf of the inmates to stop the practice. That filing resulted in Friday’s settlement agreement.
Under the agreement, filed Friday in U.S. District Court in New Mexico, the state Department of Corrections must stop the practice and remove any second bunks that were bolted onto walls of single-prisoner cells any time after 1991. Under the terms of the agreement, the department must also restore good time to any prisoners who lost any over incidents related to them having been “double-celled.”
Deputy Secretary of Administrative Support Alex Sanchez confirmed Monday that the department removed 232 bunks from the facility — which she said has a total capacity of 376 inmates.
Sanchez said in an email that the prison temporarily double-bunked inmates with a medium-level risk because of a heating, ventilation and air-conditioning issue. “We agree in retrospect we should have alerted [counsel for the inmates] long before doing so.”
The recent settlement agreement requires the department to seek permission from the court before housing any inmates in nonstandard accommodations, even in an emergency.
Donatelli said Corrections Secretary Gregg Marcantel didn’t know about the double-celling in Grants, nor did any other high-ranking corrections officials.
But Sanchez said in an email, “We maintain we had the authority to double bunk at Western (we have been doing so since ’88 or ’89).”
Donatelli said the prohibition against double-celling is one of the only parts of the 1991 Duran Decree still in effect.
Other checks and balances put in place to regulate things such as medical care and staffing were retired over the years after the Department of Corrections demonstrated compliance with the standards in the decree, he said.
But he and Cubra insisted that population caps must be maintained. “The whole decree is now boiled down to population control,” he said. “We wanted protection from an oncoming increase in inmate population.”
Sanchez said the double-bunking was done temporarily to address problems with the heating and cooling units in one part of the prison.
But Donatelli said the practice has “been going on for years. What brought it to our attention recently was expansion to new cell blocks.”
Donatelli said the department may have been preparing the prison to hold more inmates, because the department is considering moving women to that facility.
“There is a big population issue looming here, and Corrections is going to have to figure out how they are going to solve that problem,” he said. “Fortunately, overcrowding and back-filling is not an option because of the Duran Decree.”
Sanchez said the Grants prison has a capacity of 376 but last week it had about 237 prisoners. She said the number of female inmates in state custody is about 725.