Most years governors, lawmakers have been tough on crime

In one of the most heinous crimes in memory, little Lilly Garcia was killed while riding in the car with her father.

“My daughter was 4 years old when she was shot in the head on Oct. 20 by an individual who should not have been out on the street,” Veronica Garcia told a Senate committee.

Lilly died in 2015.

Candidate Mark Ronchetti would have you believe that crime has exploded under Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, but she’s only been in office four years. Crime was a major headache for Gov. Gary Johnson, then a Republican, who campaigned for office on cleaning up crime. Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democrat, called for mandatory jail time for repeat offenders. Republican Gov. Susana Martinez pushed a crime package.

Crime in New Mexico has been really bad for a really long time. Each governor has demanded reforms, and each legislative session has passed some crime bills but rejected more. What seems to be a good idea is, on close examination, not so good.

Look at the 2016 session.

After Lilly’s killing and the murder of a Rio Rancho police officer, Martinez and lawmakers were primed to attack crime, and they were pretty successful. They produced bail bond reform, increased penalties for child porn, authorized a criminal records database, made restraining orders for domestic violence abusers and rapists permanent (Racheal’s Law), allowed judges to consider juvenile records when setting bail or conditions of release for felony offenders, and finally budgeted money to clear the backlog of rape and sexual assault kits.

But it was an election year, and that revved up political rhetoric.

Dems called Martinez’s big crime package the “all crime all the time” proposal. They suspected the old ploy of proposing tough crime bills only to use them during campaigns to say the opposition was soft on crime. That year, polling showed crime was replacing jobs as a leading public concern.

It wasn’t all political. In a tight budget year, Dems were unwilling to send more people to prison when the prisons and courts were underfunded.

“Lilly’s Law” generated the most emotional debates. Sponsored by a retired police officer, it would have beefed up the three-strikes law by increasing the number of crimes included in the habitual offender law.

Sen. Jacob Candelaria, then a Democrat, decried labeling elected officials as hard on crime or soft on crime, but concluded, “Society is morally justified in imposing severe punishment on people who commit violent acts and do it repeatedly.”

Fellow Democrat, Sen. Jerry Ortiz y Pino, argued: “We’re manufacturing criminals. Our prison system doesn’t work. When we send young men to prison for 30 years, they can’t function on the outside.” He taught classes inside the penitentiary and said he’d seen rehabilitation take place.

Former Gov. Gary Johnson helped kill the three-strikes bill. In a letter to lawmakers, he wrote: “I get incensed when a guy walks out of prison and proceeds to hurt or kill someone. And I certainly understand the pressure on legislators, the governor, and law enforcement to ‘do something.’

“Contrary to their intent, mandatory minimum laws like three strikes do little to reduce crime. They do, however, help drive prison overcrowding and demand substantial increases in corrections spending.” That’s why Alabama and Mississippi had revisited their harsh sentencing policies and taken steps to reduce recidivism and prison overcrowding.

The state’s correctional officers testified that they were overworked – officer vacancies were 45 % – and said the governor’s crime bills would further strain the system. The bill died.

Regardless of who’s governor in 2023, the next crime debate will sound the same. And we’ll hear more from corrections. Five of the state’s 26 jails have staff vacancy rates above 50% and the overall vacancy rate was 20%.

Roundhouse newbies will still demand, “Lock ‘em up.” And the debate will repeat.

This article originally appeared on Carlsbad Current-Argus: Most years governors, lawmakers have been tough on crime