A Pretrial Detention Motion (PDM) is a request from our prosecutors asking a judge to keep a defendant in custody while the case is pending, rather than release that person into the community.

At the Bernalillo County District Attorney’s Office, we do not file PDMs in every case. We evaluate each case individually, based on the specific facts and circumstances.

Under the law, the court must find that the defendant poses a danger to the community and that no conditions of release can reasonably assure community safety.

When deciding whether to seek pretrial detention, we typically consider:

Our office seeks pretrial detention when the evidence supports it and detention is necessary to help protect the community.

This dashboard tracks how individual judges rule on PDMs — grant and denial rates, and how they compare across the bench — so the public can see those patterns for themselves.