FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE September 4, 2009
CONTACT: Micah McCoy, (505) 266-5915 X1003 [email protected]
ALBUQUERQUE— In a settlement reached today with the ACLU of New Mexico and the Youth Law Center (San Francisco, CA), the State of New Mexico Children, Youth, and Family Department (CYFD) agreed to make substantial improvements to essential health and safety services for youth in their custody.  Today’s settlement stems from a lawsuit that the ACLU filed in 2007 to enforce the terms of a 2006 contract between the two entities which resulted in the closure of Springer boy’s school and set forth promises to improve security, behavioral health screening and treatment, and quality assurance systems.
“This agreement demonstrates the commitment of CYFD Secretary Dorian Dodson to providing improved health and safety to youth in their custody,” said ACLU Executive Director Peter Simonson. “Rather than fighting it out in court, we sat down to agree on what needed to improve and how it was going to be accomplished. We designed a flexible, cost-effective agreement based on best practices in the field.”
The agreement includes an appendix entitled, “The Way Forward,” which outlines detailed improvements that CYFD will make in areas of accountability, quality assurance, safety and protection of youth, health services, and educational programming. Major points of the agreement include commitments by CYFD to:

• Invite nationally-recognized juvenile justice expert Paul DeMuro to take part in a Technical Advisory Committee to advise and work with CYFD to implement the agreement;
• Re-focus CYFD’s Office of Quality Assurance on continuous quality improvement processes, including regular and detailed reviews of juvenile justice facilities;
• Implement an effective system for abuse investigation and filing of grievances, and ensure timely and appropriate corrective action is taken in response to substantiated grievances.  This includes the creation of new grievance officer positions in YDDC, Camino Nuevo, and J. Paul Taylor Center.
• Reduce living units to twelve youths or less, providing safer places for youth to live;
• End abusive and coercive lockdown procedures and revise policies on physical restraints;
• Revise policies for managing older youth (more than 60% of youth in CYFD custody are older than eighteen);
• Implement the Missouri model of youth detention and rehabilitation;
• Establish transition care for youth that will begin at the individual’s commitment and continue through his or her reintegration into society;

The ACLU will maintain a continuing monitoring presence in CYFD facilities through December 31, 2010 to ensure goals are met.
Simonson said, “CYFD agrees with the ACLU that youth detention centers should not be warehouses for New Mexico’s future adult criminals. These facilities must provide youth with a safe environment, adequate behavioral health services and, above all, a genuine opportunity to rehabilitate themselves.”

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Related Documents:

AGREEMENT - THE WAY FORWARD

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2009 AGREEMENT BETWEEN CYFD AND THE ACLU

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:Tuesday, July 14, 2009
CONTACT: Nancy Koenigsberg (505) 256-3100 of Disability Rights NM or Terri Beach (505)242-2228 for the City of Las Cruces
LAS CRUCES—The Las Cruces Police Department (LCPD) reached an agreement with civil rights groups to expand officer training to improve interactions with persons who have or appear to have mental disabilities.  In furtherance of its policy that LCPD has not, does not and will not target such individuals for questioning, intervention or arrest, the LCPD will, among many other efforts:

• Continue to develop LCPD’s specialized response system for persons who have or appear to have a mental illness. This system will continue to include LCPD Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) response officers specially trained in techniques for interventions with persons with, or who appear to have, mental disabilities.

• Expand commitment to provide all officers with tools and training needed to respond

appropriately to people with, or who appear to have, mental disabilities, including: 40 hours of New Mexico Department of Public Safety (NMDPS)-accredited instruction in crisis management to all cadets; 40 hours of NMDPS-accredited Crisis Intervention Training to those officers who volunteer to undergo the training and 40 hours of NMDPS-accredited instruction bi-annually to all officers, including eight hours of advanced in-service training regarding interactions with persons with, or who appear to have, mental illness.

• Expand commitment to provide officers with the training and authority to divert persons with, or who appear to have, a mental disability to available community mental health treatment resources as an alternative to arrest.

• Continue participation in monthly stakeholders’ meetings to discuss a strategic plan to identify, develop and implement a plan for Las Cruces and Doña Ana County to provide additional mental health resources that may be pooled and used to provide sufficient opportunities for diversion of persons with mental illness from the criminal justice system, including the development of sufficient 24/7 mental health services. Stakeholders to include county social services agencies and representatives from mental health providers, the judiciary, the district attorney’s office, the public defender’s office, individuals who use mental health services, family members of individuals who use mental health services, the New Mexico Behavioral Health Purchasing Collaborative, interested legislators, and other interested parties.

The agreement stems from a lawsuit filed by Disability Rights New Mexico formerly the Protection and Advocacy System), the ACLU of New Mexico, the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, and private attorneys Peter Cubra, Lisa Schatz-Vanz, and Mike Lilley. Also under the agreement, the City of Las Cruces will pay $150,000, part of which will be used to promote awareness of mental health issues. The City also agrees to track and make available training-related documentation.
The agreement received unanimous City Council approval on March 16, 2009 and is in the process of being finalized. Private attorneys Peter Cubra, Lisa Schatz-Vance and Mike Lilley worked with the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico, Disability Rights New Mexico, and the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law on the agreement.

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The mission of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of New Mexico is to maintain and advance the cause of civil liberties within the state of New Mexico, with particular emphasis on the freedom of religion, speech, press, association, and assemblage, and the right to vote, due process of law and equal protection of law, and to take any legitimate action in the furtherance and defense of such purposes. These objectives shall be sought wholly without political partisanship.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:Wednesday, June 17, 2009
CONTACT: Brendan Egan, Staff Attorney, ACLU-NM (505) 243-0046
Albuquerque—The ACLU of New Mexico sued the Geo Group corporation and several employees of New Mexico’s newest private prison today, alleging violations of seven inmates’ right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment. The lawsuit stems from a December 10, 2008 incident in which all seven inmates were locked in a cold shower room with little or no clothing for five hours. When the inmates were showering, the prison had gone on “lock-down” because of a disturbance in another area of the prison. Some of the seven inmates were almost to their cells when they were forced back in the shower room.
While locked in the shower, prison personnel teased and taunted the inmates for the five hours. One female prison guard also videotaped them, laughing and dancing at the inmates, all of whom were male. Tear gas used to control the disturbance elsewhere in the prison drifted into the shower room. One of the inmates who suffered from asthma requested to be let out of the shower room to get his inhaler because of the gas, but his request was ignored by guards.
Claiming they couldn’t find the keys, after five hours the guards forced the inmates to crawl out of the shower through a filthy, cinderblock-size hole in the shower wall.
Several of the inmates developed skin conditions because of the incident, which went untreated for weeks by the prison.
“New Mexico has one of the largest percentage of inmates housed in privately-run prison facilities in the country,” said Bryan J. Davis, a Cooperating Attorney for the ACLU of New Mexico. “These prisons go up, the employees don’t receive adequate training, and the inmates suffer the consequences. It’s irresponsible on the part of the private prison companies and the State that contracts with them.”
Filed in federal court, the lawsuit seeks compensatory and punitive damages against the private prison company and its employees. The case was brought by Bryan J. Davis of Davis & Gilchrist, P.C., an ACLU-NM Cooperating Attorney; George Bach and Brendan Egan, ACLU-NM Staff Attorneys; and Phil Davis, ACLU-NM Co-Legal Director.

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The mission of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of New Mexico is to maintain and advance the cause of civil liberties within the state of New Mexico, with particular emphasis on the freedom of religion, speech, press, association, and assemblage, and the right to vote, due process of law and equal protection of law, and to take any legitimate action in the furtherance and defense of such purposes. These objectives shall be sought wholly without political partisanship.