Subcommittee discusses reform of criminal code

Nov. 27--Both Democratic and Republican legislators on a panel charged with overhauling the state's criminal code agreed Tuesday that the focus of the criminal justice system should be on violent offenders and de-emphasizing non-violent offenders.

"We should be locking up the people we're scared of, not people we're mad at," said Sen. Lisa Torraco, R-Albuquerque, who co-chairs the Criminal Justice Reform Subcommittee studying the criminal code.

"The public is ahead of the policy-makers on this," said Rep. Antonio "Moe" Maestas, D-Albuquerque, the other co-chairman of the panel. "Currently the system is unsustainable."

Tuesday's meeting was the first step in what is expected to be a two-year process. It's the first such effort in this state since the early 1960s.

At the meeting, the subcommittee heard advice from a former Texas legislator and an aide to the governor of South Dakota. Both were at the forefront of reform efforts for the criminal justice systems in their states.

Former Texas House Corrections Chairman Jerry Madden, a conservative Republican insurance man from Plano, spearheaded his state Legislature's prison reforms, beginning in 2005, that are credited for lowering recidivism rates and prison costs. He said he was able to get the support of appropriations committee chairmen in his legislature when he showed how the reforms would cost $300 million less than building a new prison.

Texas redirected funding that would have gone into building new prisons to expand its drug rehabilitation and mental health programs. That state recently closed a 1,100-bed prison.

Crafting and passing a major reform bill is "the easy step," Madden told the subcommittee. Implementing the various reforms is the hard part.

Jim Seward, the general counsel for South Dakota Gov. Dennis Daugaard, told the committee his state, inspired by what had happened in Texas and other states, passed a massive South Dakota Public Safety Improvement Act earlier this year. Seward chairs an oversight committee responsible for implementing the various reforms.

South Dakota's reform of its probation and parole system caught the eye of several New Mexico legislators. Seward said studies have show the optimal probation period is 2.4 years. If someone can make it that long without a violation, he probably won't be a threat to public safety.

"You don't want parole officers supervising people who are compliant," Seward said. Parole officers should focus their efforts on higher-risk offenders, he said.

South Dakota has instituted a policy called "earned discharge," in which eligible probationers can earn 30 days off their probation.

Both men stressed that it's imperative to seriously analyze all available data to see where the problems are and which programs are working and which are not.

Both Seward and Madden said it's important to get the executive and judicial branches of the government on board to ensure the success of such efforts. Torraco said she's gotten positive responses from the courts and the governor's office on the subcommittee's endeavor. A spokesperson for the Gov. Susana Martinez didn't respond to a request for comment about the subcommittee.

One person who has expressed interest in the criminal justice reforms is former state Appeals Court Judge Thomas Donnelly of Santa Fe.

Donnelly, in a letter to Torraco and Maestas, said that he was the final draftsman of the 1963 Revised New Mexico Criminal Code, which he said was "the first comprehensive codification of the criminal laws of New Mexico undertaken since Territorial days and our admission to statehood."

In his letter, Donnelly said the process, which began in 1957, took years longer than originally expected.

In 1961, the former judge said, the Legislature rejected one version of the new criminal code. This, he said, was because of issues, some of which remain controversial today. These include criminal liability for abortion; possession and control of guns; proposed changes to the sodomy statute; judicial discretion in sentencing; and the liability of corporations for criminal acts.

Torraco and Maestas encouraged citizens to share ideas for criminal justice reform. The email for the subcommittee is cjrs@nmlegis.gov.

Contact Steve Terrell at sterrell@sfnewmexican.com. Read his political blog at roundhouseroundup.com.

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