By Steve Terrell
The Santa Fe New Mexican
SANTA FE, N.M. — For more than a year, a panel of New Mexico legislators has been discussing ways to change the state’s approach to criminal justice and step back from the long-held attitude that the best way to fight the crime problem is jailing more criminals and giving more power to police.
Though there was no sweeping overhaul of the system this year, criminal justice reformers in the Legislature can claim some victories. Despite all the partisan eye-gouging during the session, lawmakers from both parties passed at least three significant pieces of legislation in this area.
In an action that has received national attention, lawmakers passed — with no opposition — a bill that would end the practice of law enforcement taking a suspect’s property or money before being convicted of a crime. “This bill removes the unjust and inequitable process known as civil forfeitures from our state law,” said bill sponsor Zach Cook, R-Ruidoso, in a statement on the last day of the session.
Lawmakers also passed a bill that would create a system of “halfway houses,” or “transitional residential facilities,” for nonviolent inmates being released from prison and another that would reward people on probation for good behavior by reducing the amount of supervised probation they must serve.
New Mexico’s steps in this direction are in line with a national movement of leaders left and right coming together to advocate for significant changes in the way we deal with crime. Last week, there was a Bipartisan Summit on Criminal Justice Reform in Washington, D.C., that attracted 600 participants from both sides of the aisle.
Sen. Lisa Torraco, R-Albuquerque, who sponsored the halfway-house bill and carried the forfeiture bill in the Senate, said she believes the Legislature might have turned a corner as far as criminal justice issues go.
Rep. Antonio “Moe” Maestas, D-Albuquerque, agreed. “Light bulbs are starting to go on,” he said.
Torraco and Maestas are the co-chairmen of the Criminal Justice Reform Subcommittee, which meets in the months when the Legislature isn’t in session.
All of the bills that passed are sitting on the desk of Gov. Susana Martinez. While they cleared the Legislature with virtually no opposition, their supporters aren’t declaring victory yet. There is no guarantee that Martinez, a former prosecutor and wife of a former law enforcement officer, will sign any of the measures into law.
In the case of the forfeiture bill, Martinez’s Department of Public Safety opposed it during the legislative process, arguing that asset forfeiture revenue is “critical to funding the DPS law enforcement investigations and operations.” The department warned that it would have to request additional funding if it lost that forfeiture revenue stream.
On the other hand, Martinez’s Department of Corrections backed the halfway-house bill.
Maestas said in an interview Friday the forfeiture measure was “the most significant thing to pass the Legislature this year in terms of criminal justice.” If it’s signed, no citizen in New Mexico would have property seized without being convicted of a crime. The bill also would mandate that any seized proceeds be deposited into a state general fund rather than prosecutor-controlled accounts. This, supporters say, would eliminate the incentive for police agencies to unjustly seize property.
“The government has simply overreached,” Maestas said.
Some national commentators agree with him.
In The Washington Post law enforcement blog called The Watch, writer Radley Balko last week said the bill would make New Mexico “the most Fifth Amendment-friendly state in the country.”
In the March 25 edition of Forbes, writer George Leef said, “New Mexico is on the verge of a complete turnabout,” noting, “Civil asset forfeiture has been a ‘growth industry’ for many police departments around the country, allowing them to pad their budgets at the expense of hapless individuals. That is going to come to a screeching halt in New Mexico, and other states have similar bills pending.”
In Torraco’s halfway-house bill, the state would create at least four halfway houses, or transitional residential facilities, in different areas of the state so low-risk inmates could be free to go to work or to school during the day and be locked down at night. Inmates in these homes would pay on a sliding scale. However, no one who is otherwise eligible would be denied based solely on inability to pay.
Torraco estimated that housing inmates in the transitional homes would cost only $25 a day per resident, compared to prison, which costs about $100 a day for each inmate.
Maestas’ probation bill would reduce probation time for good behavior. Under his bill, for every 30 days an offender spends on supervised probation without a violation in a year’s time, 30 days of supervised probation time remaining in his or her sentence would be changed to unsupervised probation. This will allow probation officers to concentrate on those who are in danger of reoffending, Maestas said.
For the most part, the Legislature this year resisted pressure to pass laws creating more crimes and adding more penalties, despite the natural tendency among lawmakers to react to various social ills by introducing — and voting for — legislation that calls for more prison time for unpopular crimes. The House passed several such bills, but nearly all died in the Senate. Only two bills calling for more prison time cleared the full Legislature.