Facts and Policy Reforms for New Mexico
Like most states, New Mexico’s prison population has exploded in recent decades.
Like most states, New Mexico’s prison population has exploded in recent decades, growing a staggering 483 percent since 1980. While the U.S. state imprisonment rate decreased by 6 percent between 2000 and 2015, New Mexico’s imprisonment rate continued to climb by 31 percent.
Drug-related offenses dominate new prison admissions in New Mexico. The number of new admissions to New Mexico prisons for drug possession has increased 36 percent since 2012, accounting for nearly one out of every seven people admitted for new offenses in 2016.
Unsurprisingly, New Mexico’s mass incarceration crisis has had an enormous impact on people of color, especially Black people. At 1,737 per 100,000 people, the imprisonment rate for Black adults in New Mexico was over six times that of white adults in the state in 2015. In 2014, one in every 37 adult Black men in New Mexico was in prison. Although they made up less than 2 percent of the state adult population, Black people made up 7 percent of the prison population in 2015.
Latino New Mexicans are also being sent to prison at alarming rates. In 2014, the proportion of the New Mexico prison population that was Latino was the highest in the country. While they made up just 45 percent of the adult state population, Latinos constituted 61 percent of the New Mexico prison population. Between 2010 and 2015, the number of Latinos imprisoned in New Mexico grew by 13 percent. Ending mass incarceration is a critical – although insufficient – step towards addressing racial disparities in New Mexico’s criminal justice system as well as its broader society.
But it doesn’t have to be this way.
New Mexico can dramatically reduce its prison population by implementing just a few sensible reforms:
- Reclassifying lower-level offenses, such as simple drug possession, to misdemeanors.
- Reforming or repealing the habitual offender statute, which contributes significantly to the number of individuals serving lengthy prison sentences.
- Allowing elderly and infirm people in prison who pose no public safety risk to be released to home confinement or health care facilities.
- Implementing reforms to limit the number of people sent to prison due to violations of parole and probation, especially for minor or technical violations.
- Promoting alternatives to incarceration like substance abuse treatment, mental health care, and other programs.
If New Mexico were to follow these and other reforms outlined in this Smart Justice 50-State Blueprint, by 2025 it could have 4,306 fewer people in its prison system, saving over $450 million that could be invested in schools, services, and other resources that would strengthen communities. (Total prison population reduction may be +/- 1 due to rounding.)
For more information, along with detailed breakdowns of New Mexico’s prison population and the reforms needed to reduce it, click here.