By james art 
Legislators who are promised to become difficult for a crime, this legislative session will face a coalition of defenders inclined to violate the cycle of mass imprisonment in New Mexico.
On the day after the 60-day legislative session for 2025 started last week, defenders and state organizations gathered at a press conference to announce their intentions to view all public safety bills introduced at this session.
Daniel Williams, a defender of ACLU’s New Mexico police policy, told the conference on Thursday that the coalition’s focus for this session was to support bills that would help the vulnerable survivors of domestic violence and remain accommodated, to Improve access to healthcare, improve, improve vulnerable survivors of domestic violence and will be accommodated, improve access to healthcare, improve, improve, improve vulnerable survivors of domestic violence and will be accommodated, improve access to health, improving behavioral health and enlargement “Compassionate research -based” for the use of substances and abuse.
“For decades, this country and this nation have received so-called crime policies that nourish mass imprisonment and harm our communities without making us safer,” Williams said. “This is not the decision that New Mexico needs now. Everyone in New Mexico deserves policies to come from this building, which will build stability in their communities to keep us all. “
Governor Michel Lujan Grisham said in his state of the state that New Mexico was in a “crisis of the state” and diverted his message, calling on the legislature to strengthen the penalties and to tighten the sentence for certain crimes in this year’s proposals for a bill. She also urged them to insist on civil commitments for offenders who need treatment and reform of criminal competence laws, which “leave too many dangerous people to stay on the street” in this year’s bill proposals.
“Too many of us just don’t feel safe in our communities, and it’s absolutely, to be honest, completely unacceptable,” said Lujan Grisham. “These are really just healthy solutions that will keep families safer and reduce violence.”
Standing with the defenders last week was Santa Fan Adam John Grigo, owner of a car shop, an assistant car at Santa Fe Community College and a member of the ACLU Justice and Accountability Council.
He is also a former prisoner who has served two years in prison on drug possession.
“It’s really weird, but I’ve never had a look at the carcetic system before I enter it. I didn’t know what it was. I will tell you that there is no reform to happen in every facility, “Grigo told SFR. “We are entirely left to take care of ourselves.”
Grigo said in a press conference that New Mexico should focus on “true community, rehabilitation, teaching skills and eliminating these system barriers that do not allow citizens to dream again.”
“We can do this together if we allow everyone to thrive through restorative justice, not an eternal punishment,” he added.
Grigo says that while he has never been “in and out of the carcetic system” in his younger years by raising his crime at the age of 45, he has been fighting addiction for much of his life and grew up In a dangerous home environment.
“When I was 15, my father threatened to kill me,” he says, recalling his tendency to escape from home from the age of 13. It was the species of my high school. “
Grigo was born in Seattle and moves through the greater part of her life – including Virginia, Vermont and Maryland in her youth. He settled in Santa Fe after graduating from college in 1998.
In the throat of his drug abuse problems, Grigo said he had ruled Cocaine from El Paso to Santa Fe for six years. His accusation of possession of drugs followed a trauma: divorce, then the illnesses and subsequent deaths of his parents. Two weeks after he was convicted, his daughter gave birth to his grandson.
“I lost everything,” he says. “It was eight years of pure hell … and I went out and just really felt so that it was so important to be super deliberate how I live.”
In 2022, he said he was involved in intercession for what the law on the rights of voting of the state would be, which in 2023 would restore the right of the persons closed earlier to vote after release from custody. A woman named Nora Rani, a voice rights defender, who founded the national reform of the non -profit justice reform to influence justice, turned to him to ask him if he would be interested in intercessive work.
“That was my start, Jean,” Grigo says. “I am now a teacher and I take this role very seriously. And I want to train people. I want to get people skills … I want to help people become successful outside prison. There are so many barriers on the spot. “
In addition to its educational and entrepreneurial work in the automotive industry, Grigo leads a busy life in ACLU intercession. He also worked with organizers in the Enchanting Land (Olé) and led a group to study the Bible for men in the early hours of Santa Fe’s Grove Church.
“I want to deal with the solution,” Grigo says. “The decision is really that we have to help people get the support for the trauma they need.”
Other organizations aligned with New Mexico’s ACLu include Albukerke’s health for homeless, Civil Policy Center, New Mexico equality, New Mexico Coalition to end homelessness, New Mexico transgender resources Center and others.
At the press conference, Williams did not indicate the support for the bills that legislators had already introduced in the session, but told the SFR that organizations were talking to the deputies.
“We expect to see some things introduced very soon, but there is nothing we are willing to share,” Williams said, later added that the coalition had already begun to look at the “set of accounts” introduced at this session that he considers that it will nourish deprivation of deprivation of mass, the investment of imprisonment, deprivation of deprivation such as those who would increase penalties and sentence for certain crimes.
“We know that they are shown by evidence and experience so that they do not make us more favorable, which is why we are looking closely at all of these,” Williams said.