I’ve spent my career representing people who were told, as children, that their futures were already over. That work has taken me into prisons, courtrooms, and legislative chambers — places where the gap between what we say about children and how we treat them becomes impossible to ignore. It’s also what led me to help build the campaign that ended juvenile life without parole in New Mexico in 2023, a reform that reflected years of learning, listening, and refusing to accept that extreme and permanent punishment is the best we can offer young people.
Ending juvenile life without parole was a significant step forward in repairing the juvenile justice system. It signaled that New Mexico was ready to move toward evidence‑based, developmentally informed approaches to youth justice — approaches that recognize the capacity of young people to grow, change, and take accountability in meaningful ways. But today, just three years later, we’re at a crossroads.
Right now, in the 2026 legislative session, some lawmakers are calling for bills that would cause profound harm to young New Mexicans. Senate Bill 165, for example, would create new automatic adult sentences and strip judges of the ability to keep a child in the juvenile system based on the needs of the individual child and the community. It also expands the list of offenses for which a child can receive adult sentencing.
Fear cannot be the architect of our policy. When it is, we repeat the same mistakes that have failed us for decades.
Automatic adult sentencing removes the very discretion that allows judges — who hear the facts, meet the young person, and understand the context — to make decisions that fit the case in front of them. One‑size‑fits‑all sentencing has never produced safety, and it won’t start now. These changes would dramatically increase the number of children funneled into the adult system, a system that research consistently shows is both more dangerous for youth and less effective at reducing future harm.
I understand the fear driving these policy decisions. When harm happens, communities feel shaken. Families feel grief and anger. People want answers and safety. The losses caused by youth violence are tragic and real, and they deserve to be met with urgency and compassion. But fear cannot be the architect of our policy. When it is, we repeat the same mistakes that have failed us for decades.
We know that increased incarceration does not reduce harmful behavior. In fact, youth sentenced as adults are more likely to continue to be involved in the justice system than their peers who are held in the juvenile system.
We need to lean into policies that focus on violence prevention, diversion, and harm reduction.
Young people housed in adults prisons face significantly higher rates of physical and sexual violence, isolation, and suicide. They lose access to age‑appropriate education, mental health care, and family support, all of which are essential to healthy development and long‑term stability. These harms fall disproportionately on youth of color and children with significant trauma histories, deepening inequities that already shape who enters the justice system.
Beyond the human cost, these proposals are fiscally irresponsible. According to the Legislative Finance Committee, it costs $345,000 (per child, per year) to incarcerate a child in a secure facility, 23 times more than community supervision and 345 times more than prevention programming.
We need to lean into policies that focus on violence prevention, diversion, and harm reduction. HB 5 points us toward the solutions we know work. It would strengthen the juvenile connections fund and expand the prevention, intervention, diversion, education, and rehabilitation programs that keep young people out of the justice system in the first place. It would also create local panels to guide community‑based placement decisions and require a validated detention risk assessment before a child can be detained, ensuring that detention is used only when absolutely necessary.
SB 180 would take basic but essential steps to reduce harm inside juvenile facilities by banning cameras in showers and bathrooms and limiting the use of strip searches, protections that help preserve dignity and prevent further trauma. And SM 20 would bring together experts, community leaders, and state agencies to develop a coordinated, evidence‑driven plan to address youth violence at its roots.
These policies are supported by community‑based organizations across New Mexico, like those belonging to the Justice for Youth Community Collaborative and All Safe New Mexico. The programs these organizations provide address the root causes of youth violence — poverty, trauma, lack of opportunity, unmet mental health needs — and they do so in ways that strengthen families and communities rather than tearing them apart.
We all want safe communities. We all want young people to be accountable when they cause harm. But accountability and punishment are not the same thing.
These are the approaches that deserve our investment. And these are the programs that risk being undermined if we expand incarceration and impose harsher penalties that foreclose the possibility of community‑based intervention.
We all want safe communities. We all want young people to be accountable when they cause harm. But accountability and punishment are not the same thing. Real accountability requires support, structure, and the chance to make amends — not policies that write children off before they have the chance to grow into the adults they will become.
New Mexico has already shown that it can lead on youth justice. We made a conscious choice to move away from the failed policies of the past and toward approaches grounded in evidence, compassion, and common sense. We shouldn’t go backwards now.