[Editor's Note: This is part 4 of a multi-part series of articles on almost six hours of Grant County Commission meetings on Feb. 11 and 13, 2025.)

By Mary Alice Murphy

This article on the Grant County Commission Feb, 11, 2025 work session continues the county department head reports.

Grant County Detention Center Administrator Joseph Andazola began by saying: "We currently have four officer openings at the detention center. We have one officer in training, but we are going through background checks on four applicants for the detention center, so that would make us fully staffed."

For the accreditation update, he said he attended a great accreditation presentation at the legislative session from Captain Fleming from the Dona Ana detention center. "They went over a lot of pitfalls facilities fall into with the accreditation process. He also really emphasized the medical portion of the accreditation process, where a lot of facilities have a lot of issues. He also gave a presentation on the PAR DMS, and gave a lot of pointers on how to standardize it to make it easier for the auditors to look through that. "What we are doing currently is following those suggestions and making some changes to the PAR DMS and putting those bullet points in the order that they were looking for. Captain Fleming is one of the auditors for the accreditation process. They have invited us to go there to make sure that we do understand the process. We might take them up on that. We did meet with medical last week to learn the standards for our medical. We're about halfway done with that. We are talking to Captain Fleming to do a mock audit in mid summer, late summer, and then we're going to do the actual facility inspection late fall, and that gives us approximately three to four months to fix any findings they have before the deadline of March of 2026."

In his regular report, Andazola noted that as of the end of January, the Detention Center population stood at 93 detainees, with an average daily population for January of 93.

In January 2025 they had 30 RISE grant participants, with 13 in the facility and 17 in the community. He noted the portable building was in place, and "we're just finishing the set up. Electricity was put in, plumbing setup this week, and next week, we're working on a camera system and setting up the building. I'd really like to get that in place for the commission inspection that we're going to schedule. Also, we're talking to the maintenance manager. We want to move forward on our shower project with a date to be set. We all we are looking at the plans for a greenhouse for our RISE program. One of the things that we're looking at doing in the portable building is family reunification with the detainees in the RISE program and their family. Oftentimes, a lot of detainees that are in the facility have some children and we do need some type of facility for their visits."

He said they want to make the portable building more family friendly and do programming there. Also, with a greenhouse, "we can have the right participants grow their own food and vegetables and use that as a way to reunify with their family cooking with them."

He said he had worked with HR for some promotions for sergeant and corporals. "I think it's important to recognize them. We did promotions approximately three weeks ago. We have been holding supervisor meetings every Wednesday."

Andazola said he would like to congratulate promotions for Sergeant Morales, Sergeant Brian Olivier, Sergeant Dylan Rivera, Corporal Gabriel Contreras, Corporal Alexis Olsen and Corporal Caleb Sheffner (spelling?). They worked really hard. Most of our supervisors have been there approximately maybe a year and a half or two years, and they really stepped up and tried to learn and continue to learn. I really appreciate them doing that."

He said they been holding the supervisor meetings to kind of get more structure and get that accountability within the facility, especially for the accreditation process that is ongoing through this year.

Andazola said he plans to schedule the detention center commission inspection in March." I would really like to get that portable building up and running and operational for that inspection. Also within your packet, you're going to start seeing a restrictive housing quarterly report. I think the report we have now is second or third quarter of 2024. Per state statute, we have to present the quarterly report on special restrictive housing inmates every quarter. We have to report that to the legislature and also to the commission. Restrictive housing is when any detainee spends more than 22 hours within the cell. We work really hard to make sure everybody gets at least two hours, two and a half hours out of their cell time. One of the difficulties that we have is we have a lot of detainees that come in detoxing from various substances, so oftentimes a medical person has to work really hard for a week or two to stabilize them. And also, we've seen a rise in a severe mentally ill detainees that have severe mental illness. Medical and detention facility has worked really hard to get those stabilized also. So we have seen a drop in the number of restrictive detainees in restrictive housing. We just want to continue to make sure the number gets smaller and smaller."

"I did update the five-year plan, and I'll make sure that all gets to you before the inspection," Andazola said.

District 5 Commissioner Thomas Shelley asked: "I have one two-part question here. You said you had 93 average daily population.What's our capacity?"

Andazola replied that the the capacity is approximately 95 to 100, "We do have the booking cells and the observation area cells, where they can keep a person on medical, but both cells are just temporary holding to get their initial scan and then house them in the population. When it gets up to 95, it starts getting a little bit uncomfortable. However, we do see a change in our detainee status where we have not a lot of the issues, because a lot of them are just recovering from substance abuse, and a lot of them have some severe mental issues. So we try and keep them up in medical to stabilize them in booking, and then try and house them in the back. We have seen our numbers stay pretty high within the last two quarters. So we're just working with that. I talked to Charlene (County Manager Webb) about that and that's why part of the RISE program is to really work on stopping that recidivism. We're really looking forward to expanding RISE into a lot of other programs to help these people stay out of jail and just become participants in our community because they are community members here."

Shelley asked if those detainees on restricted housing have
to have a place where they're detained by themselves.

Andazola confirmed that and said: "Yes, oftentimes there's issues due to problems within the community or within the facility. Sometimes their charge has been a part of that. But I'd say for the most part, it still is detoxing from substances and kind of coming in, really, in that medical shape that we have to keep an eye on to make sure they're okay. And also the severe mentally ill. As you tour our facility, you'll notice that a lot of our facility is dormitory style, so it's very difficult to classify someone and put someone with severe mental illness within that pod, because those with detainees in there are going to only put up with that individual for so long, because sometimes they have outbursts, and they're just not really conducive to social, staying like that."

He continued that "we often do really well at stabilizing their mental health, getting them on medication, getting them to that therapeutic level, and then they're able to go back to the general population and socialize with the others on that list. You'll find that we do it by male, female, by age, by reason that they're in special management, restrictive housing, and then how long they're there. We work really hard to shorten that timeframe that they're in restrictive housing to get them into the general population."

He noted the capacity for restricted housing is several units in the back. "We have a unit with three cells which we could use, which we kind of use for our disciplinary separation, within the facility. We also have another unit that has seven cells, of which four of those could be double bunk. However, due to that definition of restrictive housing per state statute, as long as we give them two hours out or more time, they're not classified as restrictive housing. So a lot of those people, we do keep an eye on."

District 4 Commissioner Eddie Flores congratulated Andazola on being fully staffed in the future. "It's hard to do in today's world. Thank you. How many of the inmates that are currently housed are serving under county time or under magistrate
time? "

Andazola said: "It's kind of hard to give that number, because I'd say most of our detainees are in there for several charges. They're usually on probation violators with the state, and also have charges within the county. I do know that we do charge the municipalities for housing detainees, but it's up to law enforcement where they charge. They could charge either municipalities or through magistrate court, which is in the state. So they get charged to the magistrate court. We do not charge them, but we do charge the municipalities. I know that at the legislative session, we did discuss charging the state for dual supervision if they're on probation and parole, or if they're on parole to the DoC (Department of Corrections). I know we work really well with the Sheriff's Department. Once they're sentenced, we get them out of there pretty quick, within a week or two to the DoC, and oftentimes we have a really good relationship with probation and parole that does the parole hearings in Las Cruces, so any parole violators that come through the facility are pretty much gone in a week or two. That is an issue because most of our population is made up of probation violators, and I know that New Mexico Counties is working really hard to get more funding from the state to reimburse counties for holding state inmates. They're looking at various ways and various systems to give access to all detention centers so we don't have to be sending information. They could just access our general management systems and develop more staff that way and get more funding from the state. Because, as you all know, and they presented at the legislative session, the state does not really reimburse us, probably anything near what they should."

Flores continued with his questions. "Thank you. I brought this up sometime in the last couple, two, three weeks, but have you ever thought of using the trustees? I know you call them somebody other than trustees now, but have you ever thought of using those trustees that are spending some kind of time to some sort of a work program on the highways, such as picking up garbage, because I know that's done in other parts of the state with detention facilities?"

Andazola said when he first came to the detention center back in 2011, they did have trustees going out with maintenance, and it was done with the DoC work program. "One thing that I saw here is that at the time, the people that were in the detention center were kind of letting any detainee go out, and you have to be very careful of who you let go off the property. And if you have a significant charges of a detainee or detainee that's on probation, they are still inmates, but state inmates, not county inmates. We did change it to where you have to be sentenced to the facility, sentenced to the county, to go out. However, those numbers are relatively low. We discussed that the word trustees is a unique term but you really can't trust the detainee that you have to keep an eye on. So at the prison, we call them porters. We do use porters in the kitchen to assist the company that's contracted, and we do use porters to clean the facility. And they do get special privileges, a little bit of extra portions of food, little bit of commissary, so we do make sure that those areas are covered first that we need in the facility.

"I think that's something to look at. We have to have a joint powers agreement with the different municipalities. However, the detention centers and the DoC facilities that do do that, do charge for that, and not only do they charge the for inmates a stipend of work and cleanup, but they charge director officers, and that's one of the issues. We've had a really hard time in the last several years, in keeping and maintaining our staff to where we could fully function at the facility in a safe and secure manner. So it's kind of hard to have an officer break off and go take a group of detainees to clean when you're not even having enough in the facility to run the facility correctly. But that is something to look at."

He noted the population is growing. "RISE a very good program that we're looking at doing in our portable building. And as we get in the phases of the RISE program, one of the things I think to look at would be something where they can go out in the community and not only clean, go in the community and participate. I know that the juvenile probation is wanting some more RISE people to go talk to the kids that aren't in school anymore. They're also looking at going to the portable building and having a RISE detainee talk to the kids, give them a real quick tour, being honest and open to the difficulties of detention, the difficulties that is on their family."

Flores said he was glad they were doing these program, and that it would be beneficial for the inmate, because they'd be active, and they'd be paying back to society in that type of way.

District 1 Commissioner and Chair Chris Ponce said he would like the commissioners to know the costs of housing these inmates. "I know a couple years or three years ago, it was like $65,000 that we got from the state, and we determined what it cost us to pay to house an inmate. And then I think the state sent us $65,000, which is totally lopsided. I'm sort of glad you brought this up. We go in front of the LFC (legislative finance committee) in Santa Fe and they talk to us about you have this money. We gave you this money. Your projects aren't getting done. You're behind on your project. But there's a whole process that it takes, and you will be looked at. We just got money a month ago, two months ago, that was allotted to us from the state. They're asking us about this money, but yet, they're not reimbursing us the way they should be reimbursing our detention center. That's a big issue in New Mexico Counties and the board of directors. We've discussed that a lot."

He said his other question was whether the Grant County Detention Center has a classification officer or somebody trained to do that.

"Currently we have our shift staff in booking training for classification," Andazola replied. "We are looking at maybe having a specialty post where that person is not only classification, but kind of a records person. One of the issues that we run into with such a high turnover rate, is learning the process of being a detention officer. And I said this before, I think it takes approximately a year to two years to develop a good knowledge of a detention officer.And you probably shouldn't be a corporal, unless you have five, six years, and a sergeant should be seven or eight. However, we don't have that because we lose people within a year and a half, two years. As I said, these new sergeants and corporals stepped up. They've been there approximately a year and a half, two years. One of the hardest things in the detention center is to learn about the booking process and learn the court paperwork process, and oftentimes it changes with new judges or new DAs.

He said it's a difficult thing to really focus on and learn that court process to see if it's a good release. "You have to go through six or seven cases to make sure all cases have been adjudicated. That's very important, because we don't want to release anyone that shouldn't be released. So, right now administration is the only one authorized to do releases. It does get us up on weekends, because we have review files on the weekends also. We're looking at the experience we do have in the detention center. We have approximately two or three individuals that have almost five years there, and some that are just really great at that kind of file paperwork. So we're maybe looking at a special classification officer that also does records. We have to do the paperwork to make sure those detainees are classified properly, and they work Monday through Friday. Kind of like a disposition clerk. I know Luna County has that. Dona Ana County has that. So that's something that we're looking at also within that accreditation process."

The next article will begin with the emergency manager report.

To visit the previous articles, please go to https://www.grantcountybeat.com/news/news-articles/grant-county-commission-work-session-021125-part-1; https://www.grantcountybeat.com/news/news-articles/grant-county-commission-work-session-021125-part-2 ; and https://www.grantcountybeat.com/news/news-articles/grant-county-commission-work-session-021125-part-3 .