Immigrants suffer significantly higher rates of on the job injuries and death. There are a number of reasons for this which will discussed below. Unfortunately, many immigrants do not know their legal rights when a work injury or death occurs. Immigrants Work in Dangerous Industries Immigrants, especially undocumented immigrants, tend to gravitate toward dangerous jobs. …
New Mexico Injury Attorney Blog
Ride-Hailing Accident Claims
Ride-hailing has taken the U.S. by storm. As of the fall of 2018, 36% of U.S. adults used ride-hailing services such as Uber and Lyft or their innumerable offshoots. That is a lot of passengers, a lot of trips, and inevitably a lot of accidents. To some degree, a ride-hailing accident can be treated much…
Cruel and Dangerous Presumption of Malingering in Prisoner Medical Care
Malingering is basically faking an illness in order to achieve some non-medical goal. Reading inmate files and medical records, it is apparent that inmates are routinely presumed to be malingering even when there are clear signs of serious illness. There are legitimate concerns about prison security related to malingering such as the security risks of…
La Escasez de Personal en las Prisiones de Nuevo México Contribuye al Suicidio de Reclusos
Normas, Políticas y Procedimientos para la Prevención del Suicidio en Prisión Las políticas del Departamento de Correcciones de Nuevo México (NMCD) para la prevención del suicidio presumiblemente siguen las políticas y normas estandarizadas establecidas por la Asociación Americana de Correcciones (ACA) y la Comisión Nacional de Atención de Salud Correccional (NCCHC). De una revisión de…
Denial of Legal Counsel to Solitary Inmates in NMCD’s X-Pod
Every citizen is entitled to the use of the court system for the protection of his or her rights. This includes and generally necessitates contacts with attorneys. Prisoners have the same First, Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments rights to access to the courts and attorneys. In the case of prisoners with serious medical conditions, access to…
Medical Torture in New Mexico Prisons
The right to be free of inhumane denial of medical care as well as the provision of medical care in a cruel and inhumane manner are addressed by numerous international human rights treaties including: “article 25 (1) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR); article 12 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and…
Solitary Confinement by any name is Solitary Confinement
The New Mexico Corrections Department (NMCD) has engaged in something of a shell game around the topic of solitary confinement. Specifically, they seem to believe that by referring to the practice as placement in a Restrictive Housing Unit (RHU), somehow no one will notice, and all will be fooled. We noticed, and solitary confinement by…
Investors and Banks Dump Private Prison Industry, New Mexico Sticks Embraces It
There have been a number of stories over the last few years surrounding the abuses of immigrant detainees in private prison facilities. The coverage has shown a level of cruelty within this industry that most people could not have imagined. Even banks and investors, not known to be particularly moral themselves, have found the behavior…
New Mexico Prison Osteomyelitis Epidemic Spells Medical Negligence
Many people look at a topic such the medical care of prison inmates with measured indifference or outright disdain. The underlying subtext reads, “they deserve what they get”. This broad social indifference to the health of inmates offers a bad guide for policy with dire repercussions in a broader social context. An article in the…
Guards and Inmates Both Locked Away and Forgotten
Most of the discussion surrounding our broken prison system revolves around the abuse of the rights of inmates. Collins & Collins, P.C. has commented on these matters numerous times. More often than not, what is lost in the discussion is the systemic neglect, abuse and harm suffered by guards as a result of that same…