Proposition 25, to get rid of cash bail, trailing in state
A ballot measure to abolish cash bail in California and allow judges to decide whether a defendant should be freed before trial trailed badly Wednesday.
Proposition 25, backed by Democratic leaders and most civil rights groups and opposed by the bail bond industry, was trailing 44.6% to 55.4%, with much of the vote counted.
Legislation to make California the first state to eliminate cash bail was approved by state lawmakers and signed by thenGov. Jerry Brown in 2018, and was scheduled to take effect in October 2019. But bail bond companies, whose survival depends on the 10% fees they charge for bonds that allow defendants to post bail, spent $ 3 million to collect signatures for a referendum that put the measure on hold until voters decided whether to approve it.
Supporters of the bail system say it promotes public safety by returning defendants to jail before trial if they commit a crime while free on bail or fail to show up for a hearing. Opponents, including California’s chief justice, Tani Cantil-Sakauye, say cash bail allows affluent defendants to buy their release while keeping poor people behind bars.
A 2018 state appeals court ruling aimed to change that system by requiring trial judges to consider a defendant’s financial status when setting bail. But according to the state Board of Community Corrections, of 61,000 inmates held in county jails as of June 30, more than 43,000, or 71%, had not been convicted of a crime.
Under Prop. 25, people arrested for nonviolent misdemeanors, like smallscale shoplifting, would have been released within 12 hours and remained free until trial. Currently, they can be held for at least two days or longer if found by a judge to be potentially dangerous. That provision would have affected 142,500 people a year, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.
Those charged with capital crimes would have been ineligible for pretrial release, as would people accused of domestic violence, defendants with recent serious or violent felony convictions, and those who had repeatedly failed to appear in court after being granted bail in the past.
All others would have been held for up to 36 hours while a judge examined their record with the aid of a computerized risk assessment and decided whether they should be released without conditions, freed with supervision and conditions such as drug testing, or held until trial. Those computerassisted risk assessments were a center of controversy during the campaign.
The computer programs, already used in many counties, consider such factors as a defendant’s past crimes, work history, drug use and community ties. Such data could result in bias against racial minorities, according to a study by the nonprofit Pretrial Justice Institute. That issue led the American Civil Liberties Union to remain neutral on Prop. 25, while some other groups favoring abolition of bail opposed the ballot measure.
But supporters of Prop. 25 cited a followup law, SB36, that requires counties to examine their risk assessments at least once every three years to determine their accuracy and any adverse impact based on gender, race or ethnicity.
Computerassisted risk assessments were a center of controversy during the campaign.