Proposed money bail bill will set back reform effort
The state Senate will begin considering a bill on Wednesday with dire implications for the morality and effectiveness of our criminal justice system.
If enacted, the bill would trample on our constitutional rights, set criminal justice reform efforts back decades and destroy countless lives by unnecessarily incarcerating thousands upon thousands of people. It would also increase crime and cost the public untold hundreds of millions of dollars.
The proposed legislation, Senate Bill 10, seeks to replace California’s money bail system with a regime under which virtually anyone accused of a crime can be thrown in jail while awaiting trial — even if they are innocent, have been wrongfully arrested, pose no risk of flight and are not a threat to the community.
There is no doubt that our money bail system is broken, creating two separate and unequal systems of justice — one for the wealthy and one for the poor. In recent decades, a much-needed bail reform movement has been gathering steam across the nation. Finally, last year, supporters succeeded in bringing a bail reform bill before the Legislature.
But that original bill has been gutted by special interests that to take power away from the community and concentrate it in the hands of probation officers and judges. Although the unjust money bail system must end, the Legislature’s proposed remedy is now far worse than the disease.
By locking the vast majority of people up before trial, SB10 would effectively do away with a bedrock principle of our criminal justice system: that you are innocent until proven guilty.
The legislation would also undermine our constitutional right to equality before the law by sorting defendants using crude “risk assessment” tools that are notoriously biased against people of color and the poor. It would then erode due process rights by granting judges overly broad powers to throw these people in jail before trial without input from defense attorneys or the community.
All of this has ruinous consequences for individuals. Even a few days in jail destabilizes lives: It causes people to lose their jobs and housing, wrecks their physical and mental health, exposes them to sexual violence, and even leads them to lose custody of their children. It also exposes undocumented people to the brutality of detention and deportation by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
This makes all of us less safe. Proponents of SB10 say it would create a system of “preventive detention,” but the truth is the bill could actually promote crime. One recent study shows that spending just two to three days in jail makes even “low risk” people 39 percent more likely to be rearrested while awaiting trial.
What’s more, all the unjust, unnecessary incarceration created by SB10 will cost the public tremendous amounts of money, diverting tax dollars to courts and probation departments and away from prowant grams, such as housing, schools and social services, that can improve the lives of people in our communities. Indeed, the draft legislation isn’t just unconstitutional; it’s also bad policy.
To be fair, SB10 does call for some positive changes: improved (though still insufficient) data collection, expedited appeals, and
a prohibition on charging defendants fees for court-ordered supervision.
Most important, the legislation would eradicate the predatory for-profit money bail industry — a goal of the reform movement and all those committed to equal justice.
But replacing a wealth-based system of discrimination with a system where virtually everyone is detained pretrial is not the answer. That’s why most of SB10’s original sponsors, including the ACLU, no longer support it.
Nor does the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office, and countless other advocates for criminal justice reform across the state. I hope you’ll join us by calling your elected representatives, sharing this on social media, and vocally opposing this disastrous bill.