With clock ticking on her tenure, Lujan Grisham calls out lawmakers, judges for approach to crime

With her final 60-day session as governor underway, Michelle Lujan Grisham on Wednesday criticized some legislators for blocking progress on crime and education issues, saying she has struggled to get lawmakers to do “responsible work.”

The governor also expressed support for mandatory sentencing for some crimes, while accusing judges of failing to keep New Mexicans safe under discretionary sentencing decisions.

During an hour-long conversation with the Journal, KOAT-TV and KKOB radio, the governor insisted crime is not solely an Albuquerque issue, citing rising violent crime rates in Las Cruces, Alamogordo, Raton, Santa Fe and other New Mexico cities.

“It is a statewide problem,” Lujan Grisham said. “It’s been far too easy, I think, for policymakers to say, ‘Just get Albuquerque to get their act together.’”

“We have to do this together,” she later added. “And the Legislature has to stop being risk averse.”

On the issue of public schools, Lujan Grisham expressed frustration about what she described as a lack of transparency in how more than $4 billion in state funding is spent, saying it’s up to local school boards to decide how dollars that flow through the state’s funding formula are put to use.

“I have no power over schools, in the same way I can’t tell judges what they should sentence nor can I tell a police officer who to arrest,” Lujan Grisham said.

She also claimed the House and Senate education committees, which are both led by current or retired teachers, have effectively bottled up many education initiatives in recent years.

“You’ve got a lot of former educators and superintendents who aren’t interested in changing anything,” she said.

Specifically, the governor called it “unethical and a huge conflict of interest” for current and former educators to be voting on education funding and other initiatives as legislators.

Rep. G. Andrés Romero, D-Albuquerque, the chairman of the House Education Committee, took issue Wednesday with the governor’s remarks.

“We’re a citizen Legislature and we need to have jobs outside of the Roundhouse,” said Romero, who teaches government, philosophy and economics classes at Atrisco Heritage High School in Albuquerque.

He also told the Journal his classroom experiences help inform his decisions at the Legislature, saying, “I’m certainly disappointed she would see it as a conflict of interest.”

Governor’s turbulent crime push

Lujan Grisham called a special session last summer on crime-related issues, but the Democratic-controlled Legislature adjourned without taking up most of her proposals.

During this year’s 60-day session, the governor said public safety is on many lawmakers’ minds and said she’s optimistic that proposals to increase penalties for felons in possession of firearms and fentanyl trafficking will be approved by lawmakers.

However, not all legislators are convinced that more laws would reduce New Mexico’s violent crime rate, which was almost twice the national average as of 2023.

Sen. Joseph Cervantes, D-Las Cruces, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, posted on social media recently, “It’s enforcement and accountability we’re lacking — not more laws.”

Pretrial detention has, in particular, been a controversial topic since a 2016 constitutional amendment passed by voters did away with a money-based system for getting out of jail while awaiting trial.

For the past several years, blaming judges has become the default explanation for some elected officials and law enforcement leaders about why bail reform doesn’t work, attributing it to a “broken” justice system.

However, studies conducted by researchers at the University of New Mexico found that pretrial detention works largely as intended, as 82% of people released pending trial do not commit new crimes. No studies have been released publicly that have found otherwise.

Lujan Grisham acknowledged Wednesday that tougher criminal penalties may not be a deterrent, but said, “I’ll tell you this — if you’re in jail longer, you aren’t giving more guns to teenagers. That’s enough deterrent for me.”

Data paints complex picture

The governor also said during Wednesday’s conversation that it made little sense that New Mexico’s prison population had decreased since 2018, even as crime levels increased.

“We have fewer people in jail than we did a decade ago, and crime is up,” Lujan Grisham said.

While New Mexico violent crime rates rose slightly statewide from 2020 to 2022, the most current FBI data showed a 6% and 4% drop in reported violent and property crime between 2022 and 2023, respectively.

The largest decrease in violent crime was recorded in rape and robbery, with 8% and 35% drops, respectively, and, in property crimes, burglary and auto theft dropped 14% and 5%, respectively.

Despite the overall drop in crime statewide, FBI data showed New Mexico’s most populous cities not named Albuquerque, like Las Cruces and Santa Fe, saw reported violent and property offenses increase between 2022 and 2023. Data for 2024 is unavailable.

In Albuquerque, the most populous area and where most crime happens, reported property crime has leveled off since measuring large decreases between 2018 and 2020, violent crime has ebbed and flowed in that same period, rising marginally.

While the data might paint a complex picture, New Mexicans’ attitudes toward crime appears to be largely clear.

A Journal Poll conducted in September found 84% of likely voters believed crime is a very or somewhat serious problem in New Mexico, with drugs, poverty and homelessness cited as the primary reasons.

More recently, 74% of people who voluntarily responded to an informal online survey conducted by the Journal said they believed crime was still the biggest issue facing the state.

In addition, a plurality of the more than 1,000 people who responded to the online survey — or about 38.5% — said lawmakers should focus the state’s revenue windfall on crime-fighting initiatives.

The governor faulted lawmakers on both political extremes for being entrenched in their positions on public safety, instead of focusing on finding effective compromises.

“Maybe we need more pragmatic, moderate people (in elected office), because you can’t govern on the fringes or the extremes, which is how New Mexico got into a lot of these problems,” said Lujan Grisham.