OPINION: Smarter approaches needed to end generational cycles of violence

Recently, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham hosted a series of town hall meetings throughout our state to discuss community safety and answer questions from the public. Much of what was said in these town halls echoed what we heard in a series of special meetings of the Legislature’s interim Courts, Corrections & Justice Committee earlier this year.

As chair of the CCJ committee, I convened six additional public committee meetings to discuss the governor’s proposed legislation in preparation for the special session. We brought in law enforcement officers, prosecutors, judges, behavioral health care providers, experts and community leaders. We also took hours of public comment from dozens of New Mexicans who joined us in person or tuned in online to these meetings.

We heard repeatedly that New Mexicans want to feel safe in their communities and know that their friends, family and neighbors will be able to get help when they need it. They want to see elected leaders stop playing the blame game, and start working together to develop meaningful solutions to the intertwined issues of community safety, behavioral health care, addiction, and homelessness.

We also repeatedly heard significant, substantive concerns about the specific proposed bills from the Governor’s Office regarding their effectiveness at improving community safety, their constitutionality, and their potential to cause harm to people with disabilities and criminalize homelessness, addiction, and behavioral health challenges.

Lawmakers raised similar concerns both in our public meetings and in our private conversations with the governor’s staff in the weeks leading up to the special session. Unfortunately, many of these concerns went unheard by the governor.

We made clear from the beginning that we shared the governor’s sense of urgency about these issues and we upheld our promise to give her proposals a fair hearing in our committee. We also made clear from the beginning that we would not ram through bills in a special session that we did not believe were fully baked.

Instead, we used the special session to pass a bipartisan bill that will provide urgently needed relief for victims of wildfires and floods and expand access to assisted outpatient treatment across New Mexico.

With the special session behind us, it’s now time to come back together and get to work again on meaningful solutions to the long-term challenges facing our state. I am grateful to the governor for bringing people together to continue these important conversations in her town halls.

I hope that she is listening to what New Mexicans are saying, which is that we need smarter approaches to hold violent offenders accountable, more support for housing and behavioral health care, and earlier intervention to prevent youth from becoming involved in crime so we can finally end the generational cycles of violence that plague our state.

Later this month, our CCJ committee will meet again to discuss these issues and work toward meaningful policies that we can advance in the upcoming 60-day legislative session. I invite everyone who wants to make our state a safer place to join us, whether in person or virtually, and participate in this process.

Christine Chandler is chair of the state Legislature’s interim Courts, Corrections & Justice Committee and represents District 43 in the New Mexico House of Representatives.