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Thursday, July 17, 2008

Editorial: It's Too Soon To Shut Prisons



      New Mexico's prison population is on the decline, so much so that officials are considering canceling contracts with privately run prisons.
    Not so fast.
    Before the state slams those cell doors shut, it needs to empty the ones it's using across the region at city and county lockups. Those jurisdictions aren't experiencing a drop in inmate population and have been stuck for years with the double whammy of overcrowding and around $26 million a year in costs to house state inmates. So far, the state has begrudgingly reimbursed them a fraction of that amount.
    At the Bernalillo County Metropolitan Detention Center, the problem translates into hundreds of extra inmates. And while the state Corrections Department agreed in March to stop sending technical parole violators there, that frees up just 50 to 80 beds a day in a jail that's routinely 300 or more inmates over capacity. There are still all those state inmates sentenced to fewer than 365 days, all those state inmates awaiting court appearances, all those other state parole and probation violators. Not to mention the inmates municipalities and New Mexico have had to send to out-of-state lockups.
    Now we learn the state inmate population has dropped from 6,526 in 2007 to 6,347 in 2008. While the state's six privately run prisons are 99 percent full, its six state-run prisons are at 87 percent. And a new 540-bed privately run state prison is scheduled to open Aug. 1 in Clayton.
    Corrections was surprised by the population drop, which sentencing analysts are leery of calling a trend. Department Secretary Joe Williams is considering shifting inmates from contracted detention centers in Santa Fe and Torrance counties, as well as other facilities.
    Last year the New Mexico Supreme Court upheld a Court of Appeals ruling that the state must pay the freight for its inmates.
    Before the Corrections Department starts mothballing cells it actually pays for, it should make sure it empties out the ones it doesn't.
   

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