No confirmed cases as staff modifies procedures

In an effort to stop the novel coronavirus from entering the Santa Fe County jail, officials have decreased the facility’s average daily population and have modified a variety of processes, such as booking, quarantining and inmate movement.

So far, the jail has not reported any confirmed cases of the virus. Earlier this week, Warden Derek Williams said 14 inmates had been tested. Two tests were pending and the other 12 were negative.

The jail’s efforts come as advocates push for the release of nonviolent prisoners and jail inmates across the state to prevent the rapid spread of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, in detention facilities.

A spokesman for Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said Thursday she was working on a plan for the release of some inmates, but advocates’ call for mass releases continued, with plans for “COVID-safe car rallies” Friday in Santa Fe and Albuquerque.

According to a news release, dozens of medical providers in the state also signed a letter to the governor and other state officials asking for the inmate releases to avoid a public health crisis.

While the Santa Fe County jail has policies and procedures for infectious disease control, the current situation is unprecedented, the warden said.

“It’s hard to have individual plans for something like this until it happens because the circumstances are always different,” Williams said. “When we first started hearing about this, one of the first things we did was minimize people coming in.”

In less than three weeks, the jail ended all in-person visits for inmates and switched to video arraignments and hearings.

Each inmate booked at the jail is screened outside for COVID-19 symptoms before entering the facility and faces a minimum 14-day isolation or quarantine period before entering the general population, Williams said.

Those showing no symptoms are housed in a separate unit, where their conditions are monitored. If they show no symptoms at the end of the isolation period, they move to general population. Those with symptoms are given an N95 mask before going inside the facility and are taken to an individual cell in a quarantine pod.

Williams said the jail population is

down considerably — the result of work by judges, the District Attorney’s Office, public defenders and law enforcement. Before the virus, the jail averaged about 20 intakes a day, but it now sees somewhere between one and five, Williams said.

Discretion being used by Santa Fe police officers and Santa Fe County sheriff ’s deputies on whether to arrest someone is making a difference, Williams said, adding the message he’s getting from judges is that if someone is not an imminent threat to the public, he or she may not need to be incarcerated.

But there is only so much a warden can do, said Jennifer Burrill, a public defender who has tested positive for the virus and is advocating for inmate releases. Judges are being reasonable, Burrill said, but it would take measures by the state Supreme Court, the governor, law enforcement, prosecutors and parole officials to reduce jail populations to safer numbers.

Williams said crews have been keeping the jail clean. Cleaning crews and inmate porters disinfect and clean common areas each day, and the jail goes into lockdown two days a week to clean each cell and wipe down sinks and beds, as well as disinfect all surfaces, Williams said.

Supplies for hand-washing and cleaning are available, he added. He denied allegations made by inmates in a recent Searchlight New Mexico story that reported the jail was not providing such supplies.

While he is concentrating on keeping the virus out of the jail, Williams said, he is just as concerned with making sure staff and inmates are as comfortable as possible in a stressful situation.