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Judges and Judiciary,
Government,
Criminal

Mar. 22, 2018

Lawmakers must heed call to make more just bail system

During Monday’s State of the Judiciary address, Chief Justice Tani G. Cantil-Sakauye once again called on California lawmakers to address the money bail crisis.

Peter P. Espinoza

Judge, ret.,

Peter is a retired judge of the Los Angeles County Superior Court.

During Monday's State of the Judiciary address, Chief Justice Tani G. Cantil-Sakauye once again called on California lawmakers to address the money bail crisis. Quoting Robert F. Kennedy, who told Congress in 1964 that the cash bail system was cruel, expensive and a vehicle for injustice, California's top judicial officer called on the Legislature to establish a new system that truly promotes public safety, court appearances, and justice.

I am the director of the Office of Diversion and Reentry, a division of the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services. Our primary mission is to reduce the number of inmates in the Los Angeles County jail who suffer from a serious and chronic mental illness, a substance use disorder, or a combination of the two. A high percentage of our clients in the jail are living in poverty and have experienced years of homelessness.

Bail reform efforts, like the one being considered in Sacramento, that target persons booked into jail who suffer from mental illness or other conditions that render them medically fragile will hasten their connection to community based treatment and housing services. This approach, in addition to being more humane and more cost effective, has been demonstrated to improve health outcomes and reduce recidivist behaviors.

Every year 2 million adults living with a serious mental illness are booked into local jails. Once there, many spend weeks and months awaiting a resolution of their cases because they cannot afford bail. In fact, people who suffer from mental illness are more likely to stay longer than people who do not suffer from similar conditions. In Los Angeles County, nearly one-third of defendants who appear before judges are in some form of mental health crisis.

Having served as a judge of the Los Angeles County Superior Court for more than two decades, I am all too familiar with the negative consequences of incarcerating persons who suffer from mental illness or have other complex medical conditions. I have learned that for this population of inmates, time spent in county jail almost always produces health outcomes that could be greatly improved by placing them in community-based treatment settings.

Since the Office of Diversion and Reentry's inception in the fall of 2015, our clinical team has removed more than 1,750 mentally ill inmates from the county jail and placed them in community-based restoration programs, interim housing or permanent supportive housing. Our community-based treatment programs provide a menu of clinical and wraparound support services to ensure the success of our clients in the community. Because so many of our clients do not have the financial ability to make bail, getting them connected to these interventions require their cases to proceed through normal and often time consuming criminal justice processes.

California now has the unique opportunity to establish a system that is more just, safe and efficient, and that will better facilitate access to treatment for inmates who require it. Senate Bill 10, introduced by Sen. Robert Hertzberg, would replace California's current money bail system with a pretrial system that utilizes assessments of flight and safety risk to guide judges making pretrial bail decisions. Importantly, the bill establishes a county-run pretrial services program as an alternative to money bail that that will better ensure defendants who are released will make all future court appearances. The bill would offer a seamless process from pretrial service programs to existing programs like those offered by the Office of Diversion and Reentry.

In addition to serving as an access point for needed mental health and social services, pretrial programs have proven more effective than money bail at achieving pretrial release goals and lowering recidivism rates. For example, Santa Clara County's pretrial program has helped more than 95 percent of defendants released make all scheduled court appearances and with 99 percent of those released staying arrest-free while their cases are being resolved. By contrast, the overall picture in California is far gloomier than in Santa Clara County; California has lower court appearance rates overall than the rest of the country, although California keeps far more people in jail pretrial.

Additionally, last year, the Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a motion authored by Los Angeles County Supervisors Sheila Kuehl and Hilda Solis to collaborate with various stakeholders to reform our current bail system with the goal of ensuring fairness in our pretrial release system while protecting victims and public safety.

I urge California lawmakers and Gov. Jerry Brown to heed the chief justice's call and establish a more just, efficient and safe system with robust funding for pretrial services programs.

#346653


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