by Sam Rutherford

The New Mexico Corrections Department (NMCD) has long outsourced its constitutional obligation to provide prisoners adequate medical care to private, for-profit corporations with little incentive to do so. Before November 2019, a $41 million annual contract was held by Centurion Correctional Healthcare of New Mexico, LLC, which lost a battle to withhold documentation of legal settlements when PLN’s publisher prevailed in a suit for the records on September 16, 2024, as reported elsewhere in this issue. [See: PLN, Dec. 2024, p.19.]

Quickly growing since its 2011 founding, Centurion and related companies contract with local, state and federal governments in 15 states at 325 lockups. When Centurion took over healthcare for NMCD in June 2016, predecessor Corizon Health had been sued by state prisoners more than 150 times during its nine-year tenure. Another 24 suits were filed during Centurion’s first year, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, Nov. 2018, p.60.]

As PLN also reported, the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC), nonprofit publisher of PLN and Criminal Legal News, filed a request pursuant to the New Mexico Inspection of Public Records Act in August 2020 that Centurion disclose all complaints and settlement agreements for cases in which the company paid ...