New Mexico

New Mexico’s prisons are run by the New Mexico Corrections Department (NMCD). The agency refers to a person in its custody as an inmate, identified by an NMCD number, and located through the NMCD Offender Search.

This section details all nine adult prisons. Eight are state-operated: the Penitentiary of New Mexico (Santa Fe), the state’s maximum-security prison; the Central New Mexico Correctional Facility (Los Lunas), which houses the men’s reception and diagnostic center; the Southern New Mexico Correctional Facility (Las Cruces); the Western New Mexico Correctional Facility (Grants), which holds both men and women and the women’s reception center; the Northeast New Mexico Correctional Facility (Clayton); the Roswell Correctional Center (in Hagerman); the Springer Correctional Center (a women’s facility); and the Guadalupe County Correctional Facility (Santa Rosa). The ninth, the Otero County Prison Facility (Chaparral), is the one prison still operated by a private company — Management & Training Corporation (MTC) — under contract.

Over the past several years New Mexico moved most of its prisons from private to state operation: the facilities at Clayton, Santa Rosa, and Grants returned to state management in 2021, and the state’s largest private prison, the GEO-run Lea County Correctional Facility in Hobbs, ended its NMCD contract in 2025. Otero is now the only privately operated prison holding New Mexico state inmates.

Where a newly sentenced person enters depends on sex. Men are received through the Reception and Diagnostic Center at the Central New Mexico Correctional Facility in Los Lunas. Women are received through the diagnostic center at the Western New Mexico Correctional Facility in Grants, and women are held there and at the Springer Correctional Center.

New Mexico abolished the death penalty in 2009; the sentences of the two people who remained under earlier death sentences were commuted in 2019, so no one is under a death sentence in the state. No New Mexico prison holds a death row.

A few features shape how families stay in touch. Incoming personal mail does not go to the prison — since 2022, New Mexico routes it to an off-site Securus processing center in Seminole, Florida, where it is scanned and delivered to the person’s tablet (legal mail goes to the facility). Phones, tablets, messaging, and video visits run through Securus (with Smart Communications tablets). Money is sent by postal money order to the person at their facility. Health care is provided under contract by Wexford Health.

Use the guides below for the statewide rules, or go straight to a specific facility.