December 10, 2020 A newly launched nonprofit organization plans to bring multiple lawsuits in the coming months against New Mexico s prison and jail systems, all aimed at exposing and ending what organizers call widespread abuses behind bars in the state. The New Mexico Prison and Jail Project is starting with sunlight, through something of a meta-lawsuit filed on Wednesday in First Judicial District Court in Santa Fe. The group alleges that the state Department of Corrections, its records custodian and a paralegal have violated New Mexico s primary transparency law, the Inspection of Public Records Act (IPRA), by illegally withholding documents about at least 10 other lawsuits filed against the department during the past four years for alleged violations of IPRA.
December 11, 2020
A new, local non-profit organization aiming to advocate for the civil rights of those incarcerated in New Mexico launched Thursday and announced a lawsuit against the New Mexico Corrections Department.
The New Mexico Prison and Jails Project announced that it filed a lawsuit on Wednesday, accusing the state Corrections Department of violating the state’s Inspection of Public Records Act (IPRA).
Steven Robert Allen, formerly a policy director with the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico, is the project’s director. He said the group’s first lawsuit stemmed from an inquiry to find out more about how the Corrections Department procedurally handles records requests.