A month and a half after Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham signed a public health executive order regarding gun violence and illegal drug use, the outcome for young people who are arrested remains unclear.
The order suspends a set of guidelines for helping keep young people out of detention that have been in place for about a quarter of a century. But officials are still using those guidelines in New Mexico, even as more young people are put in detention centers.
The Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative, or JDAI, which was suspended in New Mexico by the governor, is a set of guidelines from the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
“We want them to be connected to school. We want them to be connected to family,” Nate Balis, director of the Juvenile Justice Strategy Group at the Casey Foundation, said. “We want [them] to be connected to work opportunities. We want them to be connected to positive youth development opportunities in their communities.”
He said it calls for implementing community-based alternatives to detention and reforms to move cases more quickly through the system in its eight core goals. It also calls for using data and policy changes to improve racial equity.
And it emphasizes data-driven decision making that involves schools, community organizations, juvenile court officials and others.
“If we want to effectively make decisions about detention, then that shouldn't be the responsibility of any one person, any one agency,” he said.
Balis said he hopes that spirit of collaboration hasn’t left New Mexico with the order.
It’s hard to say if it has.
While the order suspended JDAI, Bernalillo County is still hiring for two jobs with JDAI in the titles. Laws directly influenced by it are still on the books, and the state’s Children, Youth and Families Department says it's still abiding by most aspects of JDAI.
That’s because they’re still written into the Children’s Code, a law that governs how children are taken into custody.
The only apparent change made since the order came through a CYFD directive last month. It calls for any child arrested in possession of a firearm to be held in a juvenile detention center. Normally, the state would use assessment criteria to determine if a minor is a risk to the community before detaining them.
Since that was suspended, 13 young people have been detained who would not have been under the previous system, an increase of 16%.
“When they're placed in detention, they’re isolated, they are strip-searched, often just like adults,” said Dennica Torres, a public defender with the Second Judicial District. She said detainment is rarely helpful to youth development.
“They do not have any sense of privacy. They don't get any therapy. It's very difficult for the families to have contact with them. They experience bouts of serious depression,” she said.
There’s data to back that up. A University of California, Los Angeles study from 2017 reported that people who were incarcerated as minors experience depression, suicidal thoughts and lower general health at higher rates than those who were not.
Another study from the Annie E. Casey Foundation found that 70-80% of young people who are incarcerated are reincarcerated as adults.
“The juvenile justice system is meant to be abbreviated because kids, really, their attention span is short. Their brains are not fully formed,” Torres said.
And a little time in detention can have a big impact.
A spokesperson for the governor gave no response when asked what data was used to make decisions about the suspension, or about why the initiative was suspended more generally. She also did not confirm if the governor intends for more changes to happen beyond the CYFD directive.
“If you're suspending JDAI, are you not gathering data? Are you not utilizing data to inform your practice? Are we not using that risk assessment anymore if JDAI is suspended?” Judge John Romero said. He served in the Children’s Court Division in Bernalillo County and retired in 2020. Romero continues to be a member of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges.
The risk assessment tool he’s speaking of normally determines if a young person who is arrested poses enough of a danger to the community to be detained. Most are not.
“Very few of these cases ever go to an actual trial and depending on the alleged delinquent act most cases were bench trials if they were trials at all,” Judge Romero said.
The recent uptick goes against overall declines in juvenile justice referrals. Those have decreased to about a quarter of their number 13 years ago. The New Mexico Legislative Finance Committee said in a report earlier this year that the decline is likely due to changes to the state’s approach to juvenile justice, such as JDAI, along with declines in the youth population and rates of youth drug and alcohol use. The state has also closed or terminated contracts with several detention centers.
However, youth of color are still significantly more likely to be detained than white youth, according to the Casey Foundation and data from CYFD. They made up about 88% of the detention population in New Mexico last year.
This coverage is made possible by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and KUNM listeners.
