***image1***Santa Fe County prepares to dress the wounds of its jail.
Carlos Archuleta winces as he sits down. His eyes are tired. His face is haggard. His voice is weary as he speaks into a telephone through the thick glass partition that separates inmates from guests in the visitation area of Delta block at the Santa Fe County Detention Center.
These aren't uncommon characteristics of a man who has been locked up for more than five months. But it isn't merely the strain of doing time that has worn Archuleta down. It's a drinking fountain.
The lights in the D-600 pod were still dark when Archuleta rose from his bunk to greet the day around 6 am on June 26. He had just cleaned his reading glasses with a Kleenex and was preparing to throw away the tissue when he stepped in a puddle of water that had accumulated overnight from a leaky water fountain in the pod's common area.
"I lost my footing," Archuleta says. "My legs went straight up in the air and I landed right on the small of my back."
Archuleta-who was booked on Feb. 5 on multiple charges, including aggravated DWI and careless driving-lay on the ground, writhing in agony until another inmate helped him to his feet. He reported the incident to a guard within minutes of the accident but says he's still waiting for prison officials to address his deteriorating condition.
"Since then I've had nothing but pain," Archuleta says. "It's like pulling nails for me to bend over. I can barely sit down. I can't sleep. It's just getting worse and nothing has really been done about it."
Archuleta-who is considering hiring a personal injury lawyer-says he filed a small mountain of grievances and had his sister Loretta call on his behalf before managing a consultation in the jail's medical ward. Several visits there have yielded little more than aspirin and a pamphlet on back exercises, none of which has alleviated his pain.
"I'd still be waiting to see a doctor if I was just filing communication forms and medical slips," Archuleta says. "The only thing that has gotten results is my sister and girlfriend calling and telling [prison officials] they're being negligent. If somebody doesn't call from the outside, it's just like spitting into the wind. You have to practically be dying before they'll do anything. Even then it takes awhile."
Management and Training Corporation-the private company that has operated the jail since 2001-has been called to task previously for its inattention to inmates' medical needs. Former inmate Jimmy Villanueva [Cover story, April 2, 2003: "Dying in Jail"] died of cancer after his condition was purportedly neglected for months by medical personnel. On June 30, Villanueva's family filed a wrongful-death suit against prison and county officials.
In addition, Santa Fe County Sheriff Greg Solano says a majority of the complaints his office has received about the jail refer to poor health care, also a point of consternation in a scathing 2003 Department of Justice appraisal of the facility.
The problems with MTC-which operates nine other correctional facilities in the United States, including the Otero County Prison Facility in southern New Mexico-became so extensive that earlier this year Santa Fe County orchestrated a takeover of its management.
The county will officially assume oversight of the facility on Oct. 11 and plans an extensive overhaul of the prison's infrastructure. Solano says national searches have been launched for a new warden and health services administrator to oversee the prison's medical operations. The county also plans to hire additional personnel and upgrade the jail's camera, phone and computer systems. But improving health care remains the top priority.
"Medical is the most crucial component that we'll address," Solano says. "It is absolutely the key to turning that place around."
Inmate Archuleta suspects MTC is merely biding its time until the county takes the facility off its hands. "What's really discouraging is that they still haven't even fixed the faucet," he says. "It's still leaking to this day."
Solano says he doesn't believe the company has grown lax with Oct. 11 approaching. "In the last six months we've actually seen a decrease in the number of complaints," he says.
There are, of course, still complaints by inmates like Archuleta that MTC has ignored the needs of its charges. When told of Archuleta's situation, the jail's Deputy Warden David Osuna said "the name doesn't ring any bells" and declined to comment specifically about Archuleta's allegations, citing prison regulations and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act which guarantees security and privacy of health information.
Archuleta is scheduled for transfer to the Central New Mexico Correctional Facility in Los Lunas this week to serve out the 18 months remaining on his sentence. He hopes he'll get more medical attention there, but he wants someone in Santa Fe to answer for his situation.
"There's always been a don't-care attitude here but it has gotten worse since there's going to be a change in management," Archuleta says. "They're pulling out and I don't know how that's going to affect me. I'm worried that nobody is going to be held accountable."
