89.9 FM Live From The University Of New Mexico
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
The KUNM news team's coverage of the 2020 legislative session and its impacts

High Bail Keeps People In Poverty In Jail

Daniel Schwen / CC-BY-SA 4.0
/
Creative Commons

The Legislature’s Criminal Justice Reform Committee met on Wednesday to talk about bail, among other topics. According to one speaker, the high cost of bail creates a system where people who can pay are released, while people in poverty remain behind bars. 

Arthur Pepin has a lot of work in front of him. He’s the director of the Bernalillo County Criminal Justice Review Commission, a group tasked with figuring out how to decrease the population at the county jail.

  The Metropolitan Detention Center has been the subject of an ongoing lawsuit for almost 19 years as a result of overcrowding. Pepin said lowering bail prices or making better use of release on recognizance might help decrease the population. "There are lots and lots of studies that are done, large and small, on the impact of money bail on people of color and those who are poor, and the system should be more rational than that in its approach to criminal justice," he said.

The Constitution is written so bail is supposed to be a last resort, Pepin explained. Courts should be able to consider whether someone’s a threat to the community or likely to return for a court date, he said, as opposed to a system where certain crimes come with automatic bail prices.

Pepin added that statistically, the rate in Bernalillo County at which people wind up staying in jail without posting bail is much higher than elsewhere in the state.

The Criminal Justice Reform Committee will continue to meet through the end of the year before drafting measures to be considered by the Legislature in 2015.

Marisa Demarco began a career in radio at KUNM News in late 2013 and covered public health for much of her time at the station. During the pandemic, she is also the executive producer for Your NM Government and No More Normal, shows focused on the varied impacts of COVID-19 and community response, as well as racial and social justice. She joined Source New Mexico as editor-in-chief in 2021.
Related Content