A new class-action lawsuit could stop the incarceration of tens of thousands of people in California jails. Non-profit group Equal Justice Under Law has filed a lawsuit claiming that judges are setting unreasonably high bails in San Francisco County, resulting in jail sentences for those who can't afford to pay.
For the poor a jail sentence can be especially catastrophic, resulting in loss of wages or loss of employment, plus additional unexpected costs such as childcare that they simply can't afford. As a result, some poor defendants end up depending on the bail bond industry for payment. Think Progress reports:
Crystal Patterson, 29, faced a $150,000 bail for her charges under the automated bail schedule the county uses. Desperate to be released because she is the sole caretaker for an elderly relative, but barely scraping by on a $12.50 hourly wage of her own, Patterson turned to the bail-bonding industry. Because she couldn’t pay the standard 10 percent fee such firms charge, she instead pulled together $1,500 from friends and then signed an agreement to repay the full $15,000 bonding charge – plus interest.
In other words, even the poor people that manage to stay out of jail often end up paying significantly more for bail than they would if they could afford the original payment.
Many people want to change the current system, but the county's hands are tied. See more below.
[This story] illustrate[s] the injustice of San Francisco County’s rigid bail rules, which the county was required to formulate by an old state law mandating that counties establish a fixed bail schedule that sets the price of pre-trial freedom for almost every criminal charge. The requirement has produced results so ugly that even the San Francisco County Sheriff is supporting the EJUL’s case and calling for an end to the bail rules.
While some argue that the current system is good because it keeps people from skipping bail, this argument is unfounded. After all, people believed to be violent or likely to skip their court date are not actually eligible for bail as it is. “As much as 99 percent of folks are actually showing up to their court appearances,”
stated Phil Telfeyan, the co-founder of EJUL. Plus, the sheriff has "pre-trial monitoring and reminders systems" that are "highly effective" in ensuring that people show up to court.
Not to mention the fact that keeping people in pre-trial detention actually makes them more likely to commit crimes. According to ThinkProgress:
[R]esearch indicates that keeping people accused of low-level crimes in pre-trial detention makes them significantly more likely to break the law than those released within 24 hours. […]
Even 48 to 72 hours of pre-trial detention is associated with a 40 percent jump in the odds that a low-risk arrestee will break the law in some other way before their trial date for the initial charge. The two-year recidivism rate is 51 percent higher for low-risk arrestees held for 8 to 14 days of pre-trial detention.
Each year, San Francisco County holds an estimated 1,800 people in pre-trial detention simply because they can't afford bail. Shockingly, Telfeyan says this is a fairly low number. “San Francisco actually has a pretty robust pre-trial release program [and] ends up releasing a more generous proportion of pre-trial arrestees than other counties we’ve looked at in California,” he
said.
This is the ninth lawsuit that EJUL has filed to end pre-trial detainment for those who simply cannot afford bail. Because EJUL has named both the state and the county as defendants in this case, a win would stop the harmful bail system from being required statewide.