The title might seem to suggest a conspiracy theory is coming. It’s not, although active imaginations could come up many plausible conspiracies at the border. This article is not that. Instead, this article is about legal claims/lawsuits for civil conspiracy against those perpetrating the human rights abuses at the border. Immunity of Government Actors to…
New Mexico Injury Attorney Blog
Atrocities at the Border: Follow the Money
A report was issued on July 2, 2019 by the Office of the Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security. The Report is entitled “Management Alert – DHS Needs to Address Dangerous Overcrowding and Prolonged Detention of Children and Adults in the Rio Grande Valley (Redacted)”. The report may be found here at least…
Medical Crisis in Immigrant Detention Facilities
The crisis at the border is well documented. So, too, are the atrocities that are routinely committed by ICE and CBP on the refugees seeking asylum in the U.S. There is no need to rehash those here. Instead, we will focus on something that is not getting as much attention as it deserves, the medical…
Emergency Medical Care and Emergency Transport in New Mexico’s Prisons
In a recent article from Prison Legal News entitled, “New Mexico Court Denies Motion to Dismiss Lawsuit Over Policy of Denying Transport to Medical Appointments During Lockdowns”, yet another series of systemic flaws in the medical care of New Mexico Corrections Department (NMCD) inmates are highlighted. The article explains the systemic failures to appropriately deal…
Profit Margins, Negligent Prison Medical Care and New Mexico Taxpayers
In a series of cases widely covered by the media, one facility’s atrocious medical care services resulted in exorbitant fiscal and physical cost—the former picked up by New Mexico taxpayers via New Mexico Medicaid, the latter suffered by the inmates. Specifically, we are referring to a group of inmates housed at one correctional facility between…
Prison Diabetes Emergencies Treated as Disciplinary Matters
Hypoglycemia and hyperglycemia both have symptoms that can lead to devastating and rather cruel misdiagnosis and failure to diagnose. The misdiagnosis or failure to diagnose a diabetic episode is often driven by prejudicial assumptions that the symptoms suggest misconduct on the part of the inmate rather than the medical emergency that it is. These assumptions…
Shocking National Data Pale by Comparison to Prison Diabetes Data
National Statistics on Diabetes The national statistics on diabetes are shocking: According to the National Center for Health Statistics, among adults 20 years and over the percent with diabetes (physician-diagnosed or undiagnosed) stood at 12.6% (2011-2014) of the population. This breaks down to 9.6% with physician-diagnosed diabetes and 3% undiagnosed. Diabetes is currently the number…
Untreated and Negligently Treated Diabetes in New Mexico Prisons
Something we should all be concerned about Most folks don’t give prison healthcare much thought. They should. The costs of poor prison healthcare as remote as it sounds, affects all of us and our communities. Prisoners have all the same health issues as the rest of us. However, the health issues that prisoners have quickly…
Understaffing in New Mexico Prisons Contributes to Inmate Suicides
Prison Suicide Prevention Standards, Policies and Procedures New Mexico Corrections Department (NMCD) policies for the prevention of suicide presumably follow the policies and standards set forth by the American Corrections Association (ACA) and the National Commission on Correctional Health Care (NCCHC). It is not clear from at all from a review of NMCD ACA and…
Investigation and Reporting of New Mexico Prison Suicides
Reporting of Inmate Deaths to Family The New Mexico Corrections Department (NMCD) provides policies regarding what is to happen when an inmate dies, is injured or becomes seriously ill while in custody. Those policies may be referenced on the NMCD web-site under the health services policy section, CD-172100 Notification of Serious Illness, Injury or Death…