Ruling on deal ending Duran decree delayed

Edict had imposed regulations aimed at raising conditions in state prisons

ALBUQUERQUE — U.S. Magistrate Judge Kirtan Khalsa on Monday stopped short of giving final approval to a settlement that would bring an end to a 40-year-old civil case that forced some of the most significant penal reforms in New Mexico history.

Instead, the judge ordered attorneys on both sides to first document several modifications to the agreement.

The Duran Consent Decree — signed in 1980 in the wake of a bloody uprising at the Penitentiary of New Mexico to settle a civil rights lawsuit filed by onetime inmate Dwight Duran — had imposed rules aimed at bringing conditions in state prisons up to constitutional standards and making sure they stayed there.

Duran and attorneys appointed to represent inmates in medium- and maximum-security prisons negotiated the book-length agreement with the state Corrections Department. For many years, the agreement governed everything from pest control to medical care and included oversight from a court monitor.

That agreement was replaced in 1991 with one that vacated most of those controls but contained a provision mandating restrictions on overcrowding would remain in effect in perpetuity.

Prisoner representatives reopened litigation of the decree in 2015, alleging the state had violated it by bolting additional bunks into single cells at a state prison facility in Grants.

The proposed agreement being considered by Khalsa would give the state a path to allow the decree to end by complying with specific requirements.

One of the provisions would require the state to move almost 300 inmates from overcrowded prisons to those with more capacity to ensure inmates each have at least 50 square feet of living space, down from the 60 square feet previously required by the Duran decree.

The settlement also calls for regular visits by an exterminator and bars the department from filling facilities to greater than 120 percent of capacity and punishing inmates for reporting sexual assaults, among other things.

Khalsa had already given preliminary approval to the deal, which prisoner representative Alexandra Freedman Smith said Monday was forged through a contentious eight-month long negotiation process with state officials.

She was expected to grant final approval Monday.

But after a discussion of some of the approximately 92 objections filed by inmates, Corrections

Department agreed to extend certain good-time credits to inmates in the Otero County Prison Facility, who had not been covered by the provisions before Monday.

The credits are supposed to be given to inmates in facilities where overcrowding was found.

Corrections Department officials had originally argued against giving the credits to Otero County inmates — many of whom are sex offenders — on the basis that doing so was a threat to public safety.

Other inmates, including those who have committed serious violent offenses and those who have six or more DWIs, are barred from receiving the credits on those grounds.

But when the judge said allowing sex offenders in other facilities to receive remedies that would be denied to sex offenders in Otero County contradicted the public safety argument, lawyers for the Corrections Department agreed to allow good time credit to be awarded to Otero County inmates.

Khalsa asked that modifications be put on the record before she issued her order, noting many of the objections to the proposed settlement had been from Otero County inmates.