Editorial: Plan To Ease MDC’s Crowding Has Promise

Fact: The state’s biggest lockup is a huge and costly headache.

Overcrowding has been a problem since the day the Metropolitan Detention Center opened in 2003. In fact, jail population in Bernalillo County has been at the center of a federal civil rights lawsuit since 1995 — nearly a decade before the MDC was opened.

The McClendon lawsuit, which led to federal court oversight to address overcrowding, costs the county nearly $1.5 million a year in legal fees alone.

Attempting to ease McClendon oversight, MDC, Bernalillo County and 2nd Judicial District Court officials are working up a plan to reduce the jail population — and give taxpayers a break.

County officials say there could be as many as 1,000 inmates now in the jail who really don’t need to be there.

With buy-in from the District Court bench and Albuquerque Police Chief Ray Schultz, the county plans to take 300 to 400 carefully screened inmates out of jail by January and put them in one of two monitoring programs where they can get the help they need — one for qualified inmates who have been convicted and one for low-risk people who are in jail awaiting trial.

“Public safety is the primary concern,” says 2nd Judicial District Chief Judge Ted Baca, so violent offenders need not even think about being considered. Those to be considered will be low-risk inmates, many with high needs — homeless people, those with substance abuse problems, mental health issues or some combination.

One program would place more people in the 2nd Judicial District Court’s pretrial services. These would include inmates awaiting trial but who are stuck in jail for reasons such as not being able to afford bond.

The other program would expand the county’s Community Custody Program, which allows qualifying inmates to serve their terms at home.

To increase inmate accountability, the county is switching to the latest high-tech ankle bracelets that employ GPS trackers and that can sense alcohol use.

Other options under consideration include:

♦ Spending about $21 million a year to convert the old jail building Downtown into a short-term, residential care center and use it for treatment and detox.

♦ Spending about $9 million to install three modular buildings adjacent to the MDC to house low-risk inmates who would get substance abuse and/or mental health services there.

♦ Shipping overflow inmates to out-of-state jails at a cost of about $19 million a year — a unanimous last resort and terrible use of tax money.

Still unclear is whether there are enough community services and programs available in the metro area to make this work. But for sure, overcrowding at MDC must be addressed before the federal court does something even more dramatic.

This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers.