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Many incarcerated women, often already traumatized from gender violence, potentially face re-traumatization once imprisoned in New Mexico through inhumane conditions and sexual assault, according to attorneys.
Lalita Moskowitz, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico, said the inhumane conditions run the gamut in New Mexico prisons from infestations of rodents and freezing conditions at Western New Mexico Correctional Facility outside of Grants to infrastructure that is “completely falling apart” and inadequate reproductive health care at Springer Correctional Center in the small northern town of Springer. She said the two New Mexico women’s correctional facilities are “some of the oldest (correctional) buildings in the state.”
NMPJP: Whistleblower Ousted For Raising Concerns About Rodents At New Mexico Women s Prison In Grants ladailypost.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from ladailypost.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Two former inmates have filed a lawsuit against a New Mexico prison and its food services contractor, claiming the jail’s kitchens were plagued by infestations of bugs, rats, and mice.
SANTA FE, N.M.
Two former New Mexico inmates have filed a federal lawsuit accusing state prison staff and a food-service contractor of cruelty and negligence for failing to resolve a yearslong rat and mouse infestation at the kitchen in a women’s lockup in the western part of the state.
The lawsuit announced Tuesday from Albuquerque-area residents Susie Zapata and Monica Garcia was filed in U.S. District Court against the prison warden and a former warden. It describes a “horrific and widespread” rodent infestation that included contact between food and rodent feces, urine and even rodents that somehow plunged into stew and a batch of oatmeal.
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SANTA FE Rodents running around the kitchen, feces in food and their rotting bodies found inside food storage areas are just some of the conditions former inmates at the Western New Mexico Corrections Facility say they had to live with.
After receiving repeated reports about the alleged ongoing rodent infestation at the state women’s prison in Grants, the New Mexico Prison and Jail Project filed a lawsuit Monday in U.S. District Court.
The lawsuit, filed on behalf of Susie Zapata and Monica Garcia, who were both released from the prison in 2019, names the food provider at the prison, Summit Food Service, and other prison officials as defendants. The suit asks for monetary damages for Zapata and Garcia due to inhumane conditions of confinement and negligence.