The Bernalillo County District Attorney’s Office would like to see part of an expected $2.5 billion surplus in state funds go toward changes to help with the detention of potentially dangerous criminals.
“It'll help a lot because even in the tough times, we fully funded the criminal justice institutions, the police, the state criminal courts and the DA's office, as well as the public defenders,” Democratic State Representative Antonio Maestas told KOAT. “So, we need to give them all the adequate resources that they need to do their jobs effectively.”
The Bernalillo County DA’s Office would like to see some of the funding go toward increasing the number of detention motions granted and suggest the Arnold Tool be utilized along with other measures. According to a KOAT report, preventative detention motions are made to keep someone charged with violent crimes behind bars until trial. The Arnold Tool gives judges a recommendation on whether someone should be let out before trial. The Arnold Tool isn’t always reliable.
“We have our detention motions granted about half of the time,” Adolfo Mendez, chief of policy and planning at the Bernalillo County DA's Office told KOAT. “Often when we move to detain an individual, the Arnold Tool does not recommend detention as well. So that poses some challenges to ensuring people that we think are dangerous get detained.”
Mendez told KOAT that, historically, when people believed to be a danger are released, they can commit other crimes. For example, 19-year-old Reginald Hall is charged with stabbing and raping a woman last Friday. The Arnold Tool recommends he be let out before trial but be closely monitored. “I think we've proposed over the last several years lots of solutions to help provide some guidance for our judges in the detention decisions,” Mendez said.
Representative Maestas says the legislature will put pressure on the courts to hopefully make some changes to keep those charged with violent crimes behind bars until their trial date.