By Jeff Proctor
Albuquerque Journal
It’s 2 a.m. and a van loaded with people just released from the Metropolitan Detention Center arrives at the corner of Fourth and Roma in Downtown Albuquerque.
The people shuffle out. Many are women who have no cash, no cell phones and nowhere to go. There to greet them is a collection of the city’s pimps, drug dealers, hustlers and various other perpetrators.
The women call it “walking the gantlet.”
Jail officials say they make a drop-off every two hours because they can’t legally hold someone who has been released or has bonded out. Lt. Gov. Diane Denish says that’s just bad policy.
“I’m not sure that policy couldn’t be changed,” Denish said this week. “Just from a safety perspective, dropping people off in the middle of the night near (Fourth and Roma) is not appropriate. It invites trouble and safety issues for everybody, not just the people being dropped off, but passersby, too. It’s not a good policy.”
Denish formed several working groups to look at policies after police began to uncover the remains of 11 women on the far Southwest Mesa in February. All of the women struggled with substance abuse and had arrest histories including prostitution charges. All of them had spent time at the MDC.
The groups are tasked with coming up with alternatives for women who live similar, high-risk lifestyles.
Lisa Simpson is heading one of the groups. Simpson operates Crossroads for Women, a transition program for homeless women with mental illness and substance abuse issues, and Maya’s Place, a residential reintegration program for women recently released from jail or prison.
She agrees with Denish about the jail’s late-night dropoff policy.
“It’s a dangerous place for anybody to be dropped off in the middle of the night,” Simpson says. “We had one woman who was supposed to come to Maya’s Place when she got out (of jail). She was dropped off down there, and before she could make the call, she was raped and beaten. That is, unfortunately, not rare.”
MDC spokeswoman Heather Lough says the jail’s policy is to transport recently released inmates who don’t have other transportation every two hours seven days a week. Jail officials chose Fourth and Roma because it is directly across the street from the Albuquerque Police Department’s main station, is well-lit and near bail bond companies.
“If somebody doesn’t have a person to come and pick them up - and we are especially concerned with females and people with mental disabilities - then we will offer to let them stay here, in our releasing area,” Lough said. “But if we’re talking about a healthy adult who has just bonded out of jail and they want to leave, we can’t legally hold them here. That is our policy.”
Public hours for the Main Police Station are from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. APD spokesman John Walsh said, so someone seeking help at the station in the middle of the night might not find any.
“The real idea would be for the jail to have more discharge planning,” Simpson said. “Ideally, they would know where they’re going, they would have a place to go, and they would be connected with their families or some kind of transitional program. “But the county simply doesn’t have the resources for that.”
Two things, however, are doable, according to Simpson.
“Our preference would be that the jail not release these people onto the street in the middle of the night,” she said. “The other would be to have a place Downtown, a place that is supervised and maybe fenced in. It would have telephone access.”
Lough said the county is considering converting the courtyard between the old Metropolitan Court and the old jail building into an area where people could wait until daylight. She said the county would consider Simpson’s ideas in developing the courtyard.
Lough said the jail has been working with South Valley homeless shelter Joy Junction to set up rides from the dropoff site to the shelter.
Denish and Simpson plan to draft a letter to the county by the end of the week asking that the policy on late-night dropoffs be changed.
Copyright 2009 Albuquerque Journal