2 Justice Systems, 1 Court
There are two juvenile justice systems operating in Albuquerque. Which one you enter depends on your zip code, your parents' income, your last name, and the melanin in your skin.
In one system, a teenager who makes a bad decision – gets into trouble, breaks the law, does something stupid that teenagers have been doing since there were teenagers – gets looked at by the adults around them and seen as a kid doing what kids do. They get a diversion program, community service, a record that disappears. The behavior gets filed under "follies of youth" and "sewing wild oats." They go to college. Some of them go to law school. Some of them become judges.
In the other system, the same behavior – same age, same type of offense, same absence of prior violent history – gets filed under "criminal predator." The record doesn't disappear. It follows the child to every school interaction, every job application, every encounter with law enforcement, every future court appearance. It compounds.
I ran adversarial research on every person assigned to a court case I had about a decade ago. That is what I know how to do. What I found: the judge had been arrested for shoplifting at seventeen. She was given diversion. She was admitted to the bar without significant inquiry. She was accepted to the bench on the explicit claim that it was "follies of youth." She is a white woman.
I robbed a store. I received the maximum sentence under Florida's Sentencing Guidelines, with aggravating enhancements applied for: my age, growing up in a single-parent home, my history with the juvenile justice system, my lack of a high school diploma, my history of mental health issues. Every mark of what had been done to me used as evidence that I deserved more time.
I'm not naming her. That is not the point. The point is that these are not equivalent crimes – shoplifting and armed robbery are not the same offense – and the woman who committed the lesser crime received diversion and a judgeship, while I received the statutory maximum with enhancements for my trauma history. The contrast is not theoretical. It is documented and specific.
Consider the broader pattern: how many Hispanic males in Albuquerque are seriously charged – or simply executed by police – for shoplifting. That is the axis on which the two systems operate. It is not the crime. It is who committed it, and who is watching when it happens.
Inside a juvenile facility, there is no such thing as a mistake. A child drops a fork and it becomes a statement – they threw it on the floor, they were escalating, they had a motivation. Everything must have a criminal motivation. The responses range from group confrontation circles – in which other incarcerated youth are organized to shame the child publicly – to solitary confinement. I spent six months in solitary as a juvenile. In aggregate, across incidents that were childish and human and assigned criminal intent by people whose job was to assign it.
Staff abuse is common. Corporal punishment is common. The mental health system that runs parallel is not better – it is the same architecture with forced medication added.
The judge whose shoplifting arrest was called "follies of youth" never learned what it means when the institution decides you are the problem. Someone looked at her and saw a human being making a human mistake. That reading led to a career. The other reading – the one the system delivers to children who don't have the right zip code, the right complexion, the right family – leads somewhere else entirely. Serious charges, at best. High-speed lead poisoning, at worst.
Sam Bregman is asking voters to expand the system that delivers the other reading. He is asking them to call that public safety.
Part 3: The studies – Sapolsky, ACEs, the meta-analysis that found Scared Straight programs increase recidivism – with links. What the evidence says and what it means for Albuquerque.
