This week New Mexico legislators will gather at the Roundhouse in Santa Fe for a Special Legislative Session dedicated to several bills that purport to address public safety. The bills under consideration center around involuntary commitment, establishing firearm possession as a second degree felony, and criminalizing homelessness under the guise of “pedestrian safety” (like panhandling) in high speed areas. Instead of making the public safer, however, these bills are rooted in an approach that relies on coercion and punishment. These types of strategies have long been proven ineffective.
Along with 40 other community groups and experts, Equality New Mexico sent a letter to Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham asking that this session be canceled. The Governor dismissed our request, stating that we have proposed “doing nothing” in a time of urgency. This is a disingenuous characterization of what we want. What we know is that policies developed by the governor’s staff in the vacuum of her office without community input are far worse than doing nothing, especially when we have been championing effective policy proposals for years that her team has failed to move forward. Our organizations have worked alongside legislators on the causes of homelessness, including the lack of affordable housing and the ways families are priced out of “developing” neighborhoods to make way for more expensive housing. We have proposed creating Behavioral Health Centers across the state, and creating statewide resources for our mental health care and addiction treatment providers to scale up their capacity to help more patients rapidly.
The Governor is right that the situation is urgent, but this isn’t just about effectively addressing the problems of behavioral health, housing, poverty, and crime. It’s about what kind of community we want to be, and how we want to treat our people. For folks experiencing hardship in these areas, life is already extremely difficult. The root causes of these problems are extremely complex, and usually stem from oppressive structures, social failings, trauma, and lack of adequate resources and support. Even when someone struggling or living beyond mistakes takes on the path to healing and recovery, it is a long process that is never a straight line. We need to recognize this in a broader context and adopt a long view, which is what should always inform any immediate actions we decide to take.
When we put our values first, we can start to develop effective policies. There are many reasons why the policies under consideration in the Special Session fall short of the mark. You don’t even have to be a policy expert, it’s just common sense.
Many of us have loved ones with behavioral health diagnoses or who are struggling with addiction, or we have experienced those things but have not been able to access those treatments. We know that our communities are crying out for help, crying out for access to the healthcare we need, physical, medical, and mental healthcare. Proper care led by experienced professionals and a strong support system create the conditions that allow someone to heal and define their own future. Imagine having your traumatized child sobered up just enough to stand trial for an incident some Karen decided was a “harm to others,” facing being institutionalized instead of getting real help. Or imagine trying to help your child get the help they need, being put on waiting list after waiting list, and then eventually being thrown in jail because of a mistake they made while waiting for that treatment that you both begged for. Widely accessible voluntary treatment is the answer. Coercion is not care.
Our neighborhoods, our state, and our country have been devastated by gun violence, and it’s understandable that people want to see something, anything done about it. We have to take a step back, however, and recognize that ‘perpetrators’ are almost always victimized long before they cycle through the judicial system. Creating a mandatory minimum sentence for people with past felony convictions in possession of a firearm is ineffectual. Research shows that additional prison time doesn’t have a deterrent effect, and feeds the destructive system of mass incarceration and recidivism. Community violence intervention programs are more effective at preventing and interrupting gun violence.
We’ve all been traveling in our cars, on public transit, cycling, or walking when we’ve encountered folks who need our help immediately. Whether it's a scorching hot day in July or a freezing day in January, can you imagine it being illegal for people suffering right in front of our faces to stand in the easiest place for passers by to provide a bottle of water or an extra jacket? Homelessness can’t be solved by punishing, fining, and pushing unhoused people out of sight and into jail. Housing solves homelessness.
As New Mexicans, our parents, children, friends, colleagues, and neighbors are dealing with these issues in our communities. Our community organizations, including the experts in mental health, homelessness, addiction, civil liberties, and LGBTQ+ rights who asked for this session to be nixed, are handling the impact of these problems daily. Does the Governor think she can tell all of us that we don’t know what’s best or viable?
We asked the Governor to work with us and revisit these issues more comprehensively in the legislature’s full 2025 session. We have to work together to understand why the meaningful policy proposals in these areas that have been previously proposed were not passed, and how we can create winning legislation that will actually work and endure. We are ready whenever the Governor is prepared to seek input and advice from those of us doing the work on the ground, rather than trying to score quick political points on the back of New Mexican families. In the meantime, we will keep working to address these very real problems. We aren’t —and we won’t be— “doing nothing.” New Mexicans deserve more than a frantic scramble to achieve so-called public safety.
