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Bernalillo County has backed off its push to decriminalize traffic violations — at least for a year while a statewide study looks at its implications across New Mexico.

There are about 65,000 outstanding warrants for traffic violations in Bernalillo County, such as speeding, driver's license and insurance issues.

That's about 65,000 people who, if they had a run-in with the law, would go straight to jail — a jail already packed and running at more than 120 percent capacity.

The Metropolitan Detention Center is under federal mandate, stemming from a decade-old inmates' rights lawsuit, to keeps its population down.

Because they can't control the number of people coming into the facility, jail officials have long wrestled with how to get them out faster. Means have included putting more inmates into community service and housing inmates in other locations.

But in late 2007, jail and county officials, along with the Legislature's Courts, Corrections and Justice Committee, discussed the option of reducing the number of new prisoners by making traffic violations a civil offense, rather than a criminal offense.

That would mean those 65,000 people wouldn't be sent to jail for not paying their fines, but instead could face collections, damage to their credit score, community service or having their cars impounded.

Of the estimated 60,000 to 70,000 people with outstanding traffic warrants, "the majority of them are for minor warrants issued on a minor traffic situation because somebody has failed to appear, failed to pay a fine or failed to go to school," said John Dantis, Bernalillo County's deputy public safety director.

"The study will basically look at whether or not it is more appropriate to handle these matters in a civil arena," he said.

The results of the study will be presented to the Legislature in 2009.

Meanwhile, the county is in discussions with the state Department of Corrections over money the county says the state owes the jail for housing parole and probation violators.

Dantis said the state and jail have reached a tentative agreement in which the county will continue to hold the violators and will bill the state. He would not say if the state has agreed to pay the bill.

"It is very serious money, well over $1 million, $2 million," Dantis said. "I think they have an obligation and we're reviewing it as we speak. Bernalillo County doesn't want any more than it is due."