A new study from The University of New Mexico's Institute for Social Research shows nearly half of all people held in jail on a granted pretrial detention motion until their trial are not being convicted in Bernalillo County. According to the October 2024 study, Bernalillo County Second Judicial Court Preventive Detention Motion Review, about 43% of people whose cases were granted a pretrial detention motion end up with their case dismissed.
The review studied more than 6,600 pretrial detention motions filed in Bernalillo County between July 2017 and June 2023. According to the report, judges grant about 60% of pretrial detention motions requested by the District Attorney (DA), most of them in violent crime cases.
"This is a problem; we're holding people in jail for extended periods who are not found guilty and disrupting their lives. If the District Attorney believes these people are the most serious offenders, they need to be convicted; they should convict them all," said researcher Paul Guerin.
Guerin, director of the Center for Applied Research and Analysis, wanted to better understand what pretrial detention motions were granted or denied and what happens to people held in jail on the motion, especially because the DA has argued people held are the most dangerous.
The study also found that individuals in pretrial detention spend an average of four months in jail before being released, with the daily cost of incarceration estimated at around $125, as reported by Guerin.
"In those 120 days in jail, they've lost their jobs, lost connection to families, and maybe they are guilty, but for whatever reason, the system can't prove it, so they dismiss the case 120 days later," he said. "We're suggesting it's not an efficient use of resources to hold people for months, if you're not going to convict them, figure it out sooner."
Historically, people were held on their ability to pay in the United States. If someone was arrested and put in jail, they could post bail to get out while awaiting trial. If a judge wanted to keep someone dangerous behind bars, they would set a high bond. However, New Mexico voters passed a constitutional amendment that essentially ended bail in 2016. The bail reform legislation didn't allow the state to keep people in jail longer if they couldn't afford to pay. Bail changed to the public safety assessment (PSA), a tool/algorithm that collects information on people based upon the probability of someone being arrested, picking up a new charge while released pretrial, or failing to appear in court. Guerin says the PSA has been studied nationwide, which shows the tool works fairly well.
"We have several studies in publications that validate the use of the public safety assessment in Bernalillo County," he said. "The public safety assessment is just one piece of information a judge uses when making their release decision."
The statute also lets the District Attorney file a pretrial detention motion, allowing them to request that a person remain in custody until their trial if they are deemed a danger to society. Once the motion is filed, a court hearing is held to decide whether to grant or deny the request.
"I want us to spend dollars wisely, so if we're going to hold people in jail, we need to hold the people who most need to be held and convict them. If they can't convict them, they need to be released earlier," he said.
This brings us to the concept known as the "revolving door," which, in this case, refers to the cycle of individuals who go in and out of jail. A person commits a crime, is released, only to end up in the system again. Guerin argues that part of the revolving door narrative suggests that these offenders are often pretrial; however, he asserts that the facts indicate otherwise. "We've been looking at the revolving door for years, it's not pretrial people, the revolving door is people committing crimes after their case has been disposed of," he said.
Guerin, who has numerous publications on pretrial detention and public safety, states that after 33 years of research, he is not surprised by the findings of this first-of-its-kind report. He plans to conduct a more detailed analysis in the future, examining the relationship between PSA scores, pretrial detention motions and outcomes, as well as court case dispositions, which will include cost data.
