Sen. Linda Trujillo (D-Santa Fe) is shown on the floor of the New Mexico Senate during the 2025 legislative session. (Photo by Austin Fisher / Source NM)
A state senator wants New Mexico to adopt a more rehabilitative model for incarcerating and treating young people who are accused of crimes and whom the state deems in need of mental health treatment.
As young people await trial in their delinquent or criminal cases, New Mexico holds them in four county-run youth detention centers in Albuquerque, Las Cruces, Farmington and Roswell.
Sen. Linda Trujillo (D-Santa Fe) told the Courts, Corrections and Justice Committee on Wednesday this leaves communities in northeastern New Mexico, including her district, without any youth detention centers. As a result, the county transports children from Santa Fe who are charged with crimes all the way to Farmington, she said.
“It’s so far away for our families, and it’s just not good for them to be so far away,” Trujillo said. “I think that we, as a state, should take responsibility for ensuring that we have detention centers that meet a standard and that provide the resources that we need to, and that are local and in our communities.”
The problem is statewide, according to Fifth Judicial District Attorney Dianna Luce and Law Offices of the Public Defender Deputy Chief of Operations Jennifer Barela, who discussed juvenile justice and treatment with the committee on Thursday.
Luce and Barela told the committee it’s difficult if not impossible to place children facing criminal charges into mental health treatment. Barela said public defenders who represent children in courts across the state tell her there’s nowhere to place young people for treatment.
“We need to look at more localized treatment,” Barela said. “These kids need to be close to their families.”
Trujillo said she wants to see the state government start building small, non-institutional youth detention facilities close to home. She said she wants a system inspired by the state of Missouri’s Division of Youth Services, which she called a national model and said considers not only a young person’s alleged crime but also their treatment needs.
New Mexico’s own child welfare agency, the Children Youth and Families Department, hired a contractor to implement the Missouri model in 2007, according to Trujillo’s presentation to the committee.
State officials in 2010 adopted a plan to implement the Missouri model which included creating regional youth detention centers, according to Trujillo’s presentation, however, she said counties still haven’t built the facilities because they can’t afford to.
After courts resolve young people’s cases, CYFD provides mental health treatment to girls and boys held in the Youth Development and Diagnostic Center in Albuquerque and boys in the John Paul Taylor Center in Las Cruces, if they meet the criteria to get in, Luce said.
“I’m proposing that we have more of those, and that they look more like a home,” Trujillo told Source NM in an interview on Friday. “It’s not just to detain youth — it’s to provide them intense therapy, to provide them the resources they need.”
The facilities Trujillo is proposing would have the same security measures any detention center would, but would hold smaller numbers of children and be built to not “look so institutional.”
Trujillo’s two proposals are part of a larger package of juvenile justice reforms she wants Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham to consider in the 30-day legislative session next year.
YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE.
This post was originally authored and published by Austin Fisher from via RSS Feed. to get your news feed on Nationwide Report®.
