NM’s Legislative Session Begins Next Week. Here Are 2 Bills To Know About.
The opening of the 2021 session of the New Mexico Legislature is set for January 19th. Here’s what our Detention and Economic Justice teams want you to know about two of the bills we are supporting.
The Private Detention Facility Moratorium Act (HB40), Sponsored by Reps Angelica Rubio and Karen C. Bash, seeks to ban private incarceration at the state level.
Since a push for private incarceration in the 1990s, New Mexico has become the state most reliant on private prisons. In 2017, 53% of the state’s prison population was incarcerated in private facilities, as compared to the national rate of 8.7%. Seven of New Mexico’s facilities operating under the authority of county, state and federal government(s) have private contracts.
In recent years, many states have begun passing laws against for-profit prisons. In total, 22 states have banned them completely, and several others have passed legislature intended to reduce the number of private prisons.
Below are a few of the criticisms of private prisons:
Private prisons are more expensive, and overcharge the state for their facilities. Rural areas housing private prisons experience higher levels of poverty, and lower levels of economic growth than the state mean.
Due to financial destabilization nationwide, contractors of private prisons have been known to skirt fines, abruptly end contracts with the state, and violate open government laws.
Cost cutting measures in private prisons lead to sometimes unsafe conditions for staff and incarcerated individuals alike, ranging from violations of labor laws to wrongful deaths.
Private prisons are drivers of mass incarceration and constantly seek to fill bed space, priorities that have made them a threat to public health. Violations of CDC guidelines are frequent.
Covid-19 makes these long-standing issues more acute.
As long as New Mexico contracts with private companies for prison operations, these flagrant human and civil rights violations will persist. HB40, supported by the New Mexico Immigrant Law Center and many of our partners, removes the government’s authority to enter into new contracts and extend, expand or renew existing contracts with private contractors. Passing this bill would make private incarceration illegal in New Mexico.
Passing HB40 would make private incarceration illegal in New Mexico.
NMILC is also supporting a follow up to 2020’s Senate Bill 137, which has not yet been assigned a number.
Last year, the New Mexico Senate passed SB137, a bill that removed immigration status as a barrier to professional licensure for a number of occupations. Federal law states that citizenship or Legal Permanent Residency is a requirement, qualifying that states do have the power to license or certify whomever they see fit. In passing SB137, New Mexico no longer requires citizenship or Legal Permanent Residency for eligibility for many careers, including medicine, education, cosmetology and social work.
NMILC staff members lobbying for SB137 at the New Mexico State Capitol in January of 2020.
SB137 did not, however, cover occupations that explicitly require a specific immigration status in New Mexico. Occupations in this category include real estate, home inspection, and ophthalmology, to name a few.
This legislative session, NMILC hopes to see a secondary bill passed, expanding upon the terms of SB137. Many occupations carrying statutory immigration status requirements for licensure under New Mexico law would indeed be encompassed by this bill; such requirements would be removed.
This year’s bill aims to eliminate an employment bottleneck for the immigrant community under broader terms than those outlined by SB137.
