Bond changes already having tangible impact

Changes to statewide bonding procedures allowing certain defendants to be released without bail came into effect July 1.

While the new system is young, it has already garnered a strong reaction.

Senate Joint Resolution 1, approved in the November 2016 election, gave arrested individuals that meet certain criteria the chance to be released without bond, according to Roosevelt County Detention Center Administrator Justin Porter.

“Now the courts will have a designee that will review a person’s file whenever they’ve been arrested, and their history, to determine if they have a violent history in their background, to see if they have any failure-to-appears, if they’re currently on probation, if the current charges are violent,” Porter said.

If the answer to those questions is “no,” he said, the individual could be released on an unsecured bond or appearance bond, requiring them only to appear in court.

While Porter said bond is necessary for violent offenders, “a majority of the people, if you tell them to show up to court on Monday, will show up to court on Monday.”

Not everyone shares that opinion however, seeing the amendment as an outright attack on bail bondsmen.

Bill Winfield, the owner of All Pro Bail Bonds in Farmington, has agents across New Mexico, including Curry and Roosevelt counties, and believes the amendment spells disaster for his line of work.

“There’s 278 agents in this state. I don’t know how many companies there are, but a lot of people are fixing to be thrown out of work,” he said.

The state, according to Winfield, will also suffer as a result of the changes.

“It’s turned into a mess, and it’s fixing to cost the state of New Mexico and the taxpayers a whole bunch of money, because these courts are going to have to hire additional people just to handle the workloads and the procedures that have been imposed upon the courts,” he said.

Winfield believes that without bond and a bail bondsman to hold them accountable, criminal suspects will see no reason to show up for court dates.

“Now what you’re fixing to see is a whole bunch of warrants going into the system, because a lot of those people aren’t going to show up. There’s no punishment, there’s no incentive to go to court,” he said.

Porter said time will soon tell if the new system will reduce jail populations.

“We’ll do this for a while, and I’m sure we’re gonna get some feedback back to the state and everything else. They’ll start telling us how it impacted the facility’s populations, and we’ll just have to see if it’s better or if it’s increasing the number of days people are in jail. It’s all kind of new to everybody across the state right now,” he said.