Probation Assistance Program

Proposal Abstract

The Bernalillo County Metropolitan Court, centrally located in the state of New Mexico, is the busiest court in the state, seeing over 58,580 (FY22) cases annually. The Bernalillo County Metropolitan Court (BCMC) proposes to implement the “Probation Assistance Program” within the Standard Probation Division via the BJA FY23 Invited to Apply-Byrne Discretionary Community Project Funding/Byrne Discretionary Grants Program, as identified in the Congressional Joint Explanatory Statement (JES) for projects designated for funding, to improve the functioning of the criminal justice system. The proposed program would provide case management services to the Standard Probation Division. The Standard Probation Division is comprised of the DWI First Offenders Program (FOP), Standard Supervision, Pretrial Supervision, Intake unit and the Pre- Sentence Report unit. The target population is justice-involved individuals who have been ordered to supervised probation, and whom after a completion of an appropriate risk and needs assessments have been deemed to be anything other than low-risk/low-need.

The overreaching goal of the project is to make available to the Standard Probation Division valuable case management and technical assistant services, for this much needed and beneficial service has not been available to this population. Additionally, funding requested will enable the Court to hire a Program/Project Specialist assigned to the Standard Probation Division to assist the Probation Officers with administrative, clerical, technical assistance and data collection/entry. Direct time a probation officer has to spend with each client; specifically, high risk/high need clients will make a significant impact on recidivism.