Grants inmates take claim of overcrowding to federal court

Representatives of New Mexico prison inmates are once again claiming in federal court that state officials are violating terms of court settlements intended to prevent crowded conditions like those that contributed to the deadly 1980 riot at the Penitentiary of New Mexico south of Santa Fe.

In a motion for injunctive relief filed Thursday in U.S. District Court, the lawyers who monitor the state’s compliance with the Duran Consent Decree said prisoners in Grants are being housed in dormitory-style conditions that don’t allow them the 60 square feet of “living and sleeping space” required by the provisions of the decree.

In some cases, the motion says, the prisoners have as little as 39.8 feet.

By comparison, an average residential bathroom has about 40 square feet of space.

The Grants facility once held women. It became a facility for men after the women were relocated in 2016, but the monitors say the overcrowding occurred while the facility housed women and has continued since the change in population.

The motion asks the state to cure the overcrowding and provide “remedial relief ” to the inmates who were housed in conditions that violated the terms of the decree.

“We haven’t seen the injunction,” Corrections Department spokesman S.U. Mahesh said Thursday, “so at this point we will reserve any comments.”