2025 Legislature’s Criminal Justice Agenda

Rachel Feldman

February 8, 2025

As we approach 3 weeks into the 2025 Legislative Session, with over 700 bills filed so far (and 10 more filing days to go), you hear a lot of “hype” about a focus of the session on CRIME.  For those with interests in criminal justice reform, I thought I would try to shed some light on what is going on. This is the first in a series of opinion pieces. 

If you watch bills, you may have seen more than 50 bills filed so far dealing with “crime”.  If you have caught speeches by leadership, you will have heard that the House Democrats will have a “crime” package ready for the Senate, and the Senate will have a behavioral health package for the House, to get to the Governor’s desk within the first half of the session.  These are both moving, but unclear whether the goals will be met. 

The Governor has been vocal in the press on her “crime” agenda.  There is a general political messaging concern among democratic legislators that it deliver a meaningful response to the “CRIME” issues.  But there is also an unwillingness to cave to the typical “tough on crime” approaches that have no evidence basis for effectiveness.  The democrats don’t want to create a lot of new crimes.  Nor do they want to increase penalties (that are seldom handed out) or lock people up in violation of their civil rights.    

So what should you watch for?  These are not worth spending time on:

•  Most of the crime bills filed by Republicans create new crimes, increase penalties, or propose different ways to lock people up for longer.  Those introduced early in the session are scheduled for hearings, but most will not be heard, will be tabled, or defeated in their first committee.  Consider a recent effort “Create Necrophilia as a Crime” HB 320.  Really? 
• The Governor has had limited success in getting democratic legislators to carry her bills.  Her favorite—Increase Penalty for Felons with Firearms—is carried by a republican.  
• Numerous bills tweak existing statutes, making tiny changes that sound like they do something, but really will not have much impact.  These are often “messaging” bills by legislators looking to the next election cycle.   

What might be worth your attention: 

• The House “crime” package will be anchored by Chandler’s “competency” bill.  This is a more carefully constructed version of a bill the governor pushed for her special session that collapsed.  It serves the twin goals of getting services to revolving door mentally ill offenders, and making civil commitment easier.  This version places more weight on getting people services, and strengthening behavioral health assessment and intervention.  It modernizes an older statute. It will better link the courts and law enforcement to whatever continuum of behavioral health services is available locally, recognizing that that continuum is full of holes.  The hope is that the behavioral health funding from the Senate package will gradually fill some of these holes.  The anchor bill is worthwhile, but by itself will have very little impact on crime. Other bills that have been heard will be considered for inclusion in the package: 
  • HB 38, “possession of weapon conversion device” is important to law enforcement as these devices are cheap and proliferating and turn guns into automatic weapons.  It mirrors federal law and is getting broad support.  This might actually impact crime. 
  • HB 39, “juvenile record in firearm background check” will limit the ability of young adults to purchase firearms. 
  • HB 12, “changes to extreme risk protective orders”, another bill favored by law enforcement that modifies existing law to enable police to be more effective in removing guns in domestic violence and related situations.   
•  Bills not yet scheduled that might get folded into a package once the House bill goes to the Senate might include: 
  • One/both/combination of the bills that make “hazing” a crime.  SB 10 & SB 148. SB 148 (Maestas, from Raul Torrez) assigns a continuum of offenses depending on the harm done by hazing, while SB 10 (Pope) makes hazing a misdemeanor.   
  • A similar bill makes “cyberbullying” a crime (Maestas).  While both hazing and cyberbullying add new crimes, which is counter the culture of both judiciary committees, recent events have demonstrated that both classes of offense have become more serious and represent entrance of youth to criminal behavior, and may therefore be viewed as somewhat preventive, and potentially deterring escalation of criminal behavior.   
  • SB 54 (Duhigg) creates programs in prisons, increases training for prison staff, and increases options for medication assisted treatment in prisons (the only viable method for treating fentanyl addiction). This bill also builds on recommendations from the Sentencing Commission.   
  • A slew of gun regulations: SB 279 (O’Malley) “gas operated semi-automatic firearms exclusion act” (parallel to the Heinrich bill in Congress which is unlikely to get any traction under the current administration).  SB 32 (Maestas) unlawful possession of firearm-4th degree felony provides stiffer penalty than unlawful possession of other stuff which is misdemeanor level.  
  • SB 250 (Maestas) prohibits use of state and local funds for NM law enforcement interventions in immigration enforcement.  Large cities in NM already have local ordinances to this effect, but this will keep statewide law enforcement focused on crime in NM.  If local police start helping federal immigration enforcement, they will not  be attending to locally tax supported priorities, and will exacerbate the crime problem.    
• Some other interesting bills that may have meaningful impact if passed: 
  • SB 35 (Maestas) increases penalties, fills gaps in existing law for drive-by shooting. 
  • SB 40 (Maestas) “interlock for driving on revoked license”—turns out there is a device for a car that will prevent the ignition from working if any alcohol is in the breath of the person driving.  There is also a $1.75 million fund to subsidize the costs of this device for poor people.  This would mandate the device if someone is caught driving on a revoked license, something that happens frequently, and could have significant impact on drunk driving.  
  • SB 154 (Maestas) eliminates deferred sentences for moving violations, requiring ticket that goes on record and impacts insurance—thought to deter youth driving offenses, for which there are currently no consequences. 
  • HB 255 “juvenile corrections act” (Thomson) increases diversion for youth offenders and increases eligibility for services, recommended by the Sentencing Commission.
• And to come in the next 10 days: 
  • A victims rights rewrite that bypasses prosecutors (who are burdened to notify victims) and more directly notifies victims of release of offenders.   
  • A probation reform that gets rid of non-substantive technical violations that currently result in re-incarceration of those released on parole—this has been passed before and vetoed based on objections from the Secretary of Corrections, who is apparently coming around.   
  • SB 50 to be introduced February 9, written by me and Senator Maestas, will strengthen independent oversight of police misconduct as well as modernizing a decades-out-of-date system for police training and standard setting.  
  • Watch to see if Sam Bregman (Bernalillo DA) can find anyone to sponsor his re-write of the “Children’s Code” to address violent juveniles.  His staff introduced a complete re-write during interim committees, but his ambitions for future higher office make him a risky political proposition.     

Some closing thoughts to Part I 

There are bodies that opine on appropriate interventions to strengthen the criminal justice system, including the sentencing commission, but their findings and recommendations are often ignored. There are national standards, think tanks, and diverse resources that are relevant to New Mexico’s criminal justice policy making. 

No one in NM government is asserting a systems level perspective from which to analyze “crime” or assess the performance of law enforcement or corrections.  Judiciary committees do stick to their principles where they have determined that classes of laws have no evidence basis for effectiveness.  Finger pointing is common, as are small fixes to gaps in existing law around the edges.  There will be a lot of noise and messaging on how the legislature is addressing crime, but real impact will be limited.

There could be “systems” perspectives on addressing criminal justice in NM, but the Executive Branch is not interested in listening, so future efforts fall to the next democratic administration.  Legislative leaders are interested, but do not have staff capacity or band-width to do the analytics.  My particular focus in the future is convening folks interested in generating meaningful system level changes for the next administration.

Meantime, my current focus is on pressuring DPS to generate entirely new and modernized training for law enforcement personnel. It is currently evaluating bidders to start this process, but DPS administration has been slow walking funding and staying “mum” about recent independent studies that show how bad our workforce has been trained.  Our police are severely under-trained for the challenges they face.  Consultants rate the state as at moderate risk for litigation related to inadequate training.  The first person responding to violence is generally a relatively inexperienced police officer.  Arrest, charging, and adjudication depend on excellence in evidence collection, reporting, and testifying. A few departments have brought outside resources to developing competence.  However, our failure to have adequate response to crime, and to effectively charge and adjudicate crimes may be in large part attributable to a failure to educate our workforce, and falls at the feet of decades of executive branch neglect.