Opponents of pretrial detention reform disregard warnings from law enforcement - Albuquerque Journal
The opposition to a modest proposal to stop the revolving door for murderers, rapists, child abusers, human traffickers and armed felons is a prime example of what is wrong with the way criminal justice policy is made in this state.
Neither Rep. Gail Chasey, D-Albuquerque, nor Rep. Daymon Ely, D-Corrales, authors of a recent (Feb. 1 Journal) op-ed supporting the status quo, has made any attempt to engage with our frontline prosecutors, investigators or victim advocates during the last year, one of the most violent in this city’s history. If they had, not only would they have learned something about the human toll of preventable violent crime, they would have been forced to contend with the inexplicable fact that more than half of armed defendants have been released by the courts during a period of unprecedented gun violence in this community.
I applaud these two representatives for their support of universal background checks and red flag laws as a common sense way of reducing gun violence. I only wish they were as interested in taking a common sense approach to keeping armed, violent criminals behind bars.
Unfortunately, advocates for this broken, catch-and-release system not only fail to use common sense, but also ignore a glaring inconsistency in their own data. They argue that the system is working because “only” 5% of released defendants have been arrested for violent crimes while on pretrial release, while simultaneously noting that 70% of violent crimes in this community go unsolved.
The simple truth is that neither the courts nor legislative analysts have any idea how many other crimes these defendants may have committed while out of custody because there is no meaningful pretrial supervision, even for the most high-risk defendants on GPS monitoring.
Not only did the courts fail to supervise these dangerous felons on nights and weekends for most of the past five years, but also they continue to hide historical GPS data, despite the fact that it might help us learn if these defendants are connected to any of the thousands of unsolved crimes in our community.
Lacking both common sense and reliable data, proponents of the revolving door have chosen to mislead the public and attack career law enforcement professionals, while disregarding our repeated warnings about the danger of recklessly redesigning the criminal justice system in order to empty the county jail.
For years, we have warned policymakers that local procedural rules with arbitrary timelines and mandatory sanctions – and which apply only to one of New Mexico’s 33 counties – would destabilize an already overburdened system, and lead to more dismissals and lower conviction rates.
We warned them not to create a detention system that had no specific guidance for judges evaluating serious violent offenders. And we warned them that reducing our access to the grand jury would have catastrophic consequences for public safety. At every turn, these policymakers have ignored the advice of people who have dedicated their lives to public safety and now, adding insult to injury, they are blaming those same professionals for the mess they created.
The fact is that our prosecutors do an extraordinary job, securing convictions for 83% of the felony defendants charged by our office, and they do so despite the profound procedural hurdles erected by policymakers who neither honor their work nor value their expertise.
Sadly, I do not expect advocates of this broken system to start listening to law enforcement professionals now, but I urge them to start listening to the 77% of voters who are fed up with violent crime and want the revolving door shut.
source: https://www.abqjournal.com/2467456/opponents-of-pretrial-detention-reform-disregard-warnings-from-law.html
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