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Easing crowded New Mexico jails not easy
2-day meeting brainstorms ideas
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SANTA ROSA — Decriminalizing some traffic offenses could be a start.
But with a jail that's at 122 percent of capacity, Bernalillo County officials will need to do much more to pare the population of the Metropolitan Detention Center, lawmakers, judges and law enforcement officials agreed on July 26.
At a meeting of the Legislature's Courts, Corrections and Justice Committee, officials floated other ideas, including two arraignment sessions a day at Metro Court, to reduce crowding at the MDC.
"It's critically important that we move in a better direction," said John Dantis, public safety director for Bernalillo County.
Any moves can't come too soon. Albuquerque Police Department Chief Ray Schultz told the committee the number of arrests in the city has not grown recently, but it surely will.
"I think we're probably about as flat as we can get. I think we're going to start to go back up," he said.
Officers arrest 21,000 people a year, but Schultz said DWI and auto theft arrests are starting to increase.
Bernalillo County and the city of Albuquerque before it have grappled for years with how to manage an ever-growing population of inmates.
A lawsuit citing crowding and poor conditions for inmates stretches back 12 years. Construction of the massive jail on the West Side was supposed to take care of the problem, but the jail reached capacity quickly after it opened.
State lawmakers now are paying attention to the problem, calling local officials before the interim committee for questioning.
One of the county's ideas for reducing the jail population is to decriminalize some minor traffic offenses. That didn't sit too well with one Albuquerque lawmaker.
"Until it's painful, until there is a perceived penalty, there's going to be noncompliance," said Rep. Bill Rehm, an Albuquerque Republican.
Rehm, a retired Bernalillo County sheriff's deputy, worries it sends the wrong message to decriminalize traffic offenses.
But Dantis said violators would be punished with civil actions including community service, negative credit reports, fines and car impoundments.
"There will always be consequences," Dantis said.
Dantis is pushing the traffic tickets measure as a way for at least 3,600 people a year to avoid jail for minor traffic offenses, including improper lane changes, failing to yield, some speeding violations and not paying tickets or not showing up in court for such offenses.
Sen. Cisco McSorley, an Albuquerque Democrat, predicted there would be support for the idea.
"We could really look at the pretty misdemeanors real quick and decriminalize most of those," said McSorley, a co-chairman of the committee.
Chief District Judge William Lang said he pushed to decriminalize some other minor offenses when he was the chief Metro Court judge in the 1990s, but he didn't have any luck.
"It never made sense to me that someone who didn't get their dog neutered ended up in jail," he said.
County officials also are pitching an idea under which a panel of local officials including county commissioners and judges would have more power to manage jail population when it reaches or surpasses capacity.
"I think the commission should be given some authority because they have all that authority (over the inmates)," Dantis said.
Under the idea, on which time ran out in this year's legislative session, the sentencing judge would still have say in each case. County officials say they will try pushing the idea again in Santa Rosa, and McSorley said he'd support the measure in 2008.
The county also wants the state to keep its probation and parole violators out of the Metropolitan Detention Center. About 900 of the 2,700 people in the MDC are probation or parole violators, Dantis said.
"That right there would solve the crowding problem," McSorley said.
During a two-day meeting in Santa Fe that ended on July 26, lawmakers heard from a handful of other counties, many of whom shared similar stories as Bernalillo County of sparse resources and crowded jails.
"Here's what I'm hearing: We're asking our detention and correction centers to be our mental health providers and treatment centers for mental health disorders and substance abusers," said Sen. Clinton Harden, a Clovis Republican.
