Grant to help prosecutors

ABQ Chamber of Commerce will use DOJ money to help district attorneys prioritize cases.

The Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce has received a $1.2 million Department of Justic grant designed to streamline the prosecution of criminals in Bernalillo County and, eventually, around the state.

The chamber announced Tuesday that the chamber will use the threeyear grant to work with the Bernalillo County District Attorney’s Office and New Mexico Tech to develop and use two new tools designed to help analyze and prioritize the thousands of criminal cases the DA receives.

While a chamber taking the lead on a crime initiative may seem unorthodox, Terri Cole, president and CEO, said the grant program fits in the organization’s focus on making Albuquerque safer.

“We are trying to contribute and find the solutions to make Albuquerque a safer place to live and do business,” Cole said.

The chamber has made dealing with crime one of its top priorities in recent years. After talking with business owners, the chamber identified improving public safety as one of its three “bold issue groups,” alongside reforming education and transforming Downtown.

Scott Darnell, who oversees policy

development and implementation for the group, said it has prioritized the use of data in fighting crime. Since 2017, the chamber has worked with Bernalillo County District Attorney Raúl Torrez to determine how data can be used more strategically.

Darnell said both tools developed with the grant money will help address workflow challenges that the district attorney’s office identified.

The first tool is designed to streamline the way law enforcement agencies package case referrals and submit discovery materials to the DA, while providing an earlier and more thorough assessment of the quality of a criminal case. Darnell said the goal is to make sure that all the details are in place when the DA’s Office launches a case. The hope is that it will guard against cases being started and then dismissed for various reasons.

The second tool will use data to aggregate information about a defendant’s past criminal behavior and allow prosecutors to determine which defendants should be prosecuted aggressively, including prosecution in federal court, and which should be referred to diversion programs or treatment facilities.

Torrez said in a statement that his office has been on the cutting edge of developing data tools to fight crime and welcomed working with “the business community, our federal partners and the state’s premier technological university on this project.”

Darnell said the chamber is working with data scientists and engineers from the Institute for Complex Additive Systems Analysis at New Mexico Tech, which is listed as a subcontractor on the grant.

Over the three-year lifespan of the grant, Darnell said the chamber and New Mexico Tech intend to design, test and implement the tools around the state. He said testing could begin in Bernalillo County as soon as 2021.

“The proposal itself will ultimately make Albuquerque a safer place,” Cole said.

The grant was issued under a Department of Justice program called “Justice Reinvestment Initiative: Reducing Violent Crime by Improving Justice System Performance.”