LOS ANGELES, CA – California Policy Lab (CPL), a non-partisan organization, produced a report about the new bail policy changes to the city and county of Los Angeles this past week, which removes “guard rails” and includes the emergency bail schedule implemented during the pandemic, and continues to enforce cash bail schedules.
Bails reforms remain a contentious issue in Los Angeles County since before the pandemic, noted CPL, explaining as early as 2019, LA County’s cash bail schedule was heavily scrutinized and led individuals to remain in jail until arraignment, many times as the result of inability to pay release.
The CPL report explains that “jail stays can impose legal, social, and economic costs on those who are detained, disrupting their families and jobs,” adding “Sacramento and San Francisco federal courts found pre-arraignment cash bail schedules, quote, without consideration of an individual’s ability to pay to be unconstitutional.”
“A common critique of reforming bail policies is that reforms will lead to increases in crime, but that’s not what we found,” explains co-author Dr. Johanna Lacoe, Research Director of the California Policy Lab’s UC Berkeley site.
In the report produced by the CPL, specific policy reform, including the emergency bail schedule removal and implementation show no short-term effects on citywide crime.
The report also found the average daily jail population increased the following two months after the emergency bail schedule was removed, and the report notes prearrangement release protocols decreased pre-trial county jail populations within the two months after implementation.
In short, the report found no effect on citywide crime, despite a roughly three percent of daily pretrial jail population decrease.
Included in the document, CLP cites Urquidi v. City of Los Angeles, a class action lawsuit filed in November 2022 against the county and city of Los Angeles along with the LAPD. Here, they challenged the recent policy reform regarding prearrangement cash schedule.
On May 24, 2023, the court barred LAPD or LASD from using period arrangement cash bail schedules as well as requiring agencies to use the county’s then-expired emergencies pay schedule; the parties attempted to come up with a new system, said CPL.
Overall, CLP found bail policy reformations, both the implementation and retraction of bail reforms, do affect jail populations in a gradual form, often taking “some time to accrue.”
Additionally, the study found the retraction of the emergency bail schedule, and return to the use of bail before the first court date, resulted in an increase in daily population within the two months following the policy change.
