New Mexico Senate to judge parole reforms
A proposal to modernize New Mexico's parole board and change the way its members can consider an incarcerated person's request for parole is headed to the state Senate.
Sens. Leo Jaramillo (D-Española) and Andrea Romero (D-Santa Fe) and Rep. Nicole Chavez (R-Albuquerque) are sponsoring Senate Bill 17, which introduces evidence-based practices when the board is considering whether to release someone who is serving a life sentence in prison.
SB 17 also clarifies crime victims' role in its deliberations and creates a process for removing members to protect their political independence.
The Senate Health and Public Affairs Committee on Feb. 6 voted 8-1 to pass the bill, and the Senate Judiciary Committee on Feb. 12 voted unanimously to send it to the full Senate.
The bill has support from the Parole Board itself, the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico, and the Law Offices of the Public Defender.
The legislation also changes the guidance to parole board members about how they should consider incarcerated people's requests for parole.
Rather than asking parole board members to focus on the incarcerated person's conduct that led to their conviction, the bill would require them to instead focus on how they have acted since they went behind the New Mexico Corrections Department's walls.
In other words, the bill would guide parole board members to evaluate the incarcerated person's conduct after a judge sentences them to figure out if they have shown they are ready to be released back into their community.
It would also require the board to hear from victims' families or representatives in the case before making a decision.
Over the past year, the board has gone through 'numerous' changes in membership, Director Roberta Cohen told lawmakers on Feb. 6.
The bill would prohibit the governor from removing a member unilaterally, but allow the governor or the board to remove members for incompetence, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office.
This story originally misidentified Nicole Chavez's position. Source regrets the error.
SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CNBC
a minute ago
- CNBC
Asia markets set to open mixed after Trump vows to significantly raise tariffs on India
Bombay Gate Gateway of India, Mumbai Arutthaphon Poolsawasd | Moment | Getty Images Asia-Pacific markets are expected to open mixed after U.S. President Donald Trump announced plans to raise tariffs on Indian exports to the country significantly. "India is not only buying massive amounts of Russian Oil, they are then, for much of the Oil purchased, selling it on the Open Market for big profits," Trump wrote on social media platform Truth Social. "They don't care how many people in Ukraine are being killed by the Russian War Machine. Because of this, I will be substantially raising the Tariff paid by India to the USA," he continued. Happy Tuesday from Singapore. Asia markets are poised for a mixed open. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 was set to start the day higher with futures tied to the benchmark at 8,701, compared with its last close of 8,663.70. Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 was set to open higher, with the futures contract in Osaka last traded at 40,610 against the index's last close of 40,290.70. However, futures for Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index stood at 24,708 pointing to a weaker open compared with the HSI's last close of 24,733.45. — Lee Ying Shan All the three major averages soared into the green on Monday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average recouping its losses from Friday's session. The blue-chip index climbed 585.06 points, or 1.34%, to finish the day at 44,173.64. Additionally, the broad market S&P 500 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite rocketed higher by 1.47% and 1.95%, ending at 6,329.94 and 21,053.58, respectively. — Sean Conlon
NBC News
an hour ago
- NBC News
White House searches for a new BLS chief with 'credibility' and 'experience'
WASHINGTON — White House officials began the week scrambling to find a permanent replacement after President Donald Trump fired Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Erika McEntarfer on Friday, following a weaker-than-expected July jobs report and drastic downward revisions of employment for the prior two months. Steve Bannon, a senior White House adviser in Trump's first term who is influential with the MAGA wing of the GOP, is pushing hard for E.J. Antoni, the chief economist at the conservative Heritage Foundation. Antoni, a contributor to the Project 2025 policy rubric, has been a longtime skeptic of BLS data. On Bannon's podcast last week, Antoni called for McEntarfer to be fired shortly before Trump pulled the trigger. In an interview with NBC News Monday afternoon, Antoni said he had not been contacted by anyone in the White House about the job. West Wing officials were "still running traps" on candidates for the Senate-confirmed position Monday, one White House aide said. The White House did not return a request for comment on whether Antoni is under consideration. Trump said Sunday that he plans to announce a pick in the next three or four days. 'It's going to have to be somebody that has tremendous credibility and experience,' said a senior White House official who noted that Trump would likely listen to the thoughts of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett and Stephen Miran, the chair of the National Economic Council. Hiring such a person could potentially be a challenge for Trump. In ousting McEntarfer, he baselessly claimed that jobs numbers are subject to political manipulation — "RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad," he said — raising the specter that a new commissioner would not release numbers that made Trump look bad. "I find it so hard to believe that your average person hears Trump fired someone because he claimed that they manipulated data and whoever he's replaced them with is going to produce trustworthy data," Kathryn Anne Edwards, an independent economic consultant and host of a podcast called The Optimist, said. Trump's decision was widely condemned, including by William Beach, who served as McEntarfer's predecessor in Trump's first term. He said her firing " sets a dangerous precedent and undermines the statistical mission of the Bureau." In his interview with NBC News, Antoni said new leadership could help increase faith in the agency and its numbers. But he suggested that won't happen overnight. "We're going to need to rebuild trust, which happens over time, and it happens with consistency. So again, I'm not even sure anybody is going to get a fair shake no matter who gets appointed to this role," he said. 'Whoever is in that role is going to need to make the changes necessary to make the numbers more accurate, and then over time, we will again have faith in the data. That is ultimately what it's about. It's about having faith in the data.' Over the weekend and into Monday, Trump's allies moved away from the narrative that McEntarfer, a political appointee of President Joe Biden, altered figures to suit a partisan agenda and toward a framing that held her responsible for revisions to earlier data. BLS has traditionally updated its monthly jobs figures based primarily on employment surveys that come in late. Together, the revisions for May and June amounted to more than 250,000 fewer jobs than originally reported. "For Trump to say she's fixing the numbers and so on, I think there's no evidence of that. It might be true, but there's no real evidence of that,' said Stephen Moore, a former Trump campaign adviser on economic issues. "The main thing is, whoever Trump chooses, if they're coming out with these wild estimates that are completely off base then people would lose faith in the numbers, but I think that's already happening." The senior White House official said that it's hard for the government and the private sector to make decisions if employment numbers don't reflect current reality — and pinned that problem on McEntarfer and BLS as one of reluctance to modernize. "The goal here is to provide data that the markets, the policy makers, can rely on and people know how it's being produced," the official said. "I think what we know factually is that there's no transparency in how these numbers are produced and why they're so bad and you know that there's been a resistance, too, From BLS to really explore that." BLS publishes the methods it uses to calculate employment data, including complex formulas, on its website, and the standards have not changed since Trump was elected. "It's purely transparent," Edwards said. "You can go and download every single survey that was sent in. ... The idea that the numbers aren't transparent, bald-faced lie; the idea that the numbers could be manipulated by a single commissioner, bald-faced lie; the idea that there is the capacity for manipulation, bald-faced lie."
Fox News
an hour ago
- Fox News
'SERIOUS MATTER': GOP lawmaker hopes justice will prevail in Trump-Russia collusion hoax
Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mo., discusses the grand jury probe into Russiagate and a Montana bar shooting on 'Special Report.'
