Changing of the Monitors

Santa Fe County is getting out of the electronic ankle monitoring business.

For 12 years, staff at the county’s Adult Detention Facility have used satellite GPS devices to keep an eye on defendants judges had released before trial under a program that costs more than $750,000 annually.

But last year, the state Administrative Office of the Courts—the Supreme Court’s business and clerical arm—announced plans to transition monitoring duties away from jailers around New Mexico and to district courts. Officials hope the move will improve efficiencies and communication among law enforcement, prosecutors and victims.

In Santa Fe, that means the First Judicial District Court must develop its own monitoring program. Court officials will get some help in the form of a $475,000 grant, approved by the County Commission earlier this week, and guidance.

County Manager Greg Shaffer tells SFR he expects the transition to be complete by Oct. 14. (Commissioners also signed off on a conceptual plan for the handoff.) Meanwhile, Court Administrator Kathleen Vigil says the court is ready.

As of Thursday, 157 people were being monitored on GPS ankle bracelets in Santa Fe County, according to Shaffer. That’s a pretty average figure during the past dozen years.

Here’s how the program works: Judges have the option in most cases to release someone accused of a crime from jail pending trial under a variety of different conditions. Among the most stringent of those is an ankle monitor, which is used to track and record a defendant’s movements and send alerts if there’s a violation. For example, in a domestic violence case, the alleged offender is prohibited from contacting the alleged defendant. If the GPS data shows such contact has occurred, the system receives a ping.

The shift from counties to courts comes after lawmakers included additional funding for around-the-clock GPS tracking in an 11th-hour, reconstituted crime bill that passed both chambers and was signed by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham after this year’s legislative session. Among the concerns for law enforcement and prosecutors as lawmakers hammered out the bill: a provision that requires the judiciary to share GPS tracking data with law enforcement or prosecutors without a warrant, if there is reasonable suspicion the data could be used as evidence.

The New Mexico District Attorneys Association wrote a letter to Lujan Grisham saying that requiring reasonable suspicion could delay responses to potentially life-threatening situations and give pretrial defendants more opportunities to commit crime while out of custody.

That hasn’t been an issue in Santa Fe.

First Judicial District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies says getting a hold of the data has been simple in her district, and she doesn’t expect that to change with the shift.

“The county program was great and while we are sad to see it go, we think the court-run program will be just as efficient,” she tells SFR. “We never had problems getting GPS information before and don’t anticipate it now that the courts are taking over. I know in other districts that has been very contentious, but we have a good relationship with our courts and don’t foresee any concerns.”

The program has historically functioned out of the county’s budget, while judges have made decisions about how it’s used. Shaffer told commissioners this week that the change would bring “operational and budgetary control together in the courts, and we do believe this is a court function as opposed to a detention function.”

In a letter to the county, Chief Judge Bryan Biedscheid asked that $300,000 be made available for fiscal year 2023, with the remaining $175,000 of the grant from the county earmarked for 2024. After two years, the court doesn’t expect any other financial help. According to Shaffer, the county and court have already started negotiations.

“Consistently high vacancy rates” at the county have made it difficult to run the program, according to the county. While the change will impact two employees, the county will most likely offer them promotions to work as case managers at the jail, Shaffer says.

Officials also expect the shift to save the county money. For Fiscal Year 2022, the county appropriated $930,381 to run the program. Actual expenditures as of July 5 amounted to $742,547, with an additional $30,956 in encumbrances. The budget for fiscal year 2023, meanwhile, includes $984,400 for the program, offset only by an estimated $75,000 in revenues generated by requiring defendants to pay for a portion of their own monitoring.

Providing the one-time grant to the court is less expensive than the county running the program this year, Shaffer says in an email to SFR. In the long term, closing the county program will free up the county’s recurring budget, and the savings are intended to go to employee salaries and benefits.

The grant would go toward leasing the monitoring equipment, while the Administrative Office of the Courts will provide funding for three new pretrial services officers at the Santa Fe courthouse for fiscal year 2023. Once the county funding dries up, “then we’re going to have to make a pitch to the Legislature to continue the funding to keep the program,” Vigil, the court administrator, tells SFR.