By Cathy Cook
Albuquerque Journal, N.M.
BERNALILLO COUNTY, N.M. — The Bernalillo County jail has $3 million in state dollars to add 21 full-time corrections officers, and the county’s youth detention center also has $2.6 million to pay for new employees.
The Bernalillo County Commission accepted the state grant funds during the regular commission meeting on Tuesday. The Corrections Detention Recruitment grants come from the New Mexico Department of Finance and Administration and were created by legislation that passed earlier this year that set aside $24.8 million for correction and detention agencies to add new correctional officer positions.
“Kudos to our legislators and our governor for seeing the great need in recruiting and hiring additional COs at our jail,” Commission Chair Barbara Baca said.
The grant money is specifically for recruiting and paying salaries and benefits of corrections officers. It cannot be used for retention or recruitment bonuses.
The Metropolitan Detention Center will unfreeze and try to fill 21 full time corrections officer positions that are unfunded at present. The $3 million will help pay those salaries for three years. In the first year, the grant will pay out $1.7 million. In the second year, the grant will provide $862,500, and in year three, the county will get $431,250 from the grant funds.
As the funding decreases, the county will begin budgeting for those positions, said Interim County Manager Shirley Ragin , so by the time the grant funds run out in 2027, the county budget will include money for those salaries.
“We’re having to seek other funding for our overtime,” MDC Warden Steven Smith said. “We have significant overtime and that’s why we’re so aggressive on the recruiting. We know that if we can get the recruiting levels up, then the overtime will come down.”
There are 50 cadets near the end of required training, who could soon become corrections officers at MDC, according to Smith.
The youth detention center could use the $2.6 million to hire at least 10 employees. In year one, the grant will pay $1.5 million, followed by $750,000 in year two and $375,000 in year three.
The juvenile jail is examining its organizational structure, said Youth Services Center Director Tamera Marcantel .
“It’s hard to operate in crisis, and when you’ve had significant staffing shortages, it can create a little bit of chaos,” Marcantel said. “They’ve done so much work to restabilize the facility and to be able to move forward, and so we’re working really hard on what that will look like.”
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