By Laurie Clark
Albuquerque Journal
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — You see them on the side of the road, wearing bright yellow vests with “Sheriff Work Detail” on the back. You may see them picking up litter, painting over graffiti, pulling weeds and doing other projects to better the community.
And most of them are more than happy to do so - for them it is better than being in jail.
Sheriff Heath White implemented the Community Restorative Justice Program about 4½ months ago, not long after he got into office.
To qualify for the program, inmates have to be nonviolent offenders. They are sentenced to community service by a judge, who decides the length of the sentence; at this time the offenders’ sentences range from 8 hours to 364 days.
They have to be screened before being accepted into the program — screened to make sure they have a chance at succeeding in this setting, are in good health, and don’t have a history of being kicked out of such programs.
White says there are many benefits to the CRJP.
“What this program is for is ... to take our nonviolent offenders out of jail, so it’s not costing us the money every day to house them,” White said. “They can keep a job if they have a job ... but at the same time they are still paying for their crime, and they are giving back to the community instead of sitting in jail.”
According to White, the program is benefiting the offenders, as well as the county.
“One person will be leaving the work program next week. He has been successful. He was the guy that could never be on parole, probation, always messed up ... we gave him a goal,” White said.
He added that having the offender within the program and giving him a goal and work, helps the offender succeed where other programs didn’t work.
Another woman in the program, White said, has gone through other programs that haven’t worked.
“She’s been so successful that she now has employment waiting for her, due to this program, she has housing now, she’s gotten away from her old habits, and she’s been with us for about three months,” he said.
There are an average of eight to 10 workers in the program per day. They work on whatever needs attention around the county, for eight hours a day, no matter what the weather is like.
They are assigned their duties after White asks the mayors in Torrance County what needs to be done in the community — so far, besides cleanup projects, they have repainted handicapped parking spaces and helped the county animal shelter prepare and move into its new building last month.
When the offenders have spare time, White puts them to work washing county vehicles or sprucing up around the Torrance County administrative office building.
Although they aren’t sitting in jail and do get to live at home, White emphasizes that the offenders are not just given a “free ride.”
They are under supervision at all times and can be given random alcohol and drug tests. Sheriff’s deputies can show up at their house at any time to check up on them to make sure they aren’t drinking and whoever is in the house is acting responsible as well.
“The family takes on a lot of the responsibility, because they aren’t allowed to have that stuff around,” White says.
The conditions aren’t ideal, but the program is voluntary.
“They are not forced into this program, the people who are assigned to us, it’s their choice - they can go sit in jail for a year or come here and work and be with their families,” he said.
And although White wants to give the offenders “every opportunity to succeed and to prosper in this program,” the offenders go straight back to jail if they don’t show up for work or make an attempt to call in with a valid excuse.
Because the program is so new, it is hard to tell if offenders are liable to go back to their law-breaking ways after their community service is done.
“The program is so new ... we haven’t had enough time to see the effects of it ... time will tell,” White says.
White does know that in the short time the program has been around, it has saved the county $26,855: $18,895 is what he projects it would cost to have workers do these jobs at minimum wage, and incarceration fees for these offenders would have been $7,960.
Copyright 2011 Albuquerque Journal