LOS ANGELES (CN) — The presiding judge and executive officer of the Los Angeles Superior Courts held a press conference Monday to defend the court's newly adopted policy of releasing those arrested for low-level offenses without cash bail, sometimes called "zero bail."
The new Pre-Arraignment Release Protocols, or PARPs, went into effect on Oct. 1 and apply only to suspects before they've been arraigned, at which time a judge can set a new bail amount.
Critics — including a number of prosecutors running to unseat current LA County DA George Gascon — have derided the new policy as "catch and release," and have suggested that those arrested for property crimes like retail theft are immediately being let loose on the street to steal again.
But court officials pushed back on that narrative.
"Money bail is antithetical to public safety," said the court's executive officer, David Slayton. "The bottom line: The new system is working."
Under that new system, serious and violent felonies are still subject to the old money bail system. Non-serious offenses are funneled into one of three categories: cite and release, in which arrestees are cited on the spot, ordered to appear before court to be arraigned, and then released; book and release, where the arrestees are taken to a police station, booked and then released; or appearance before a magistrate judge, who makes a determination on whether or not the accused should be held pending arraignment.
Magistrate judges are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Officials said that arrestees have had to wait between four and six hours to see one during the last month.
Officials released a number of statistics based on the first three weeks of the program, in order to show its efficacy. According to the data, of 5,113 bookings, 40% were for serious offenses and therefore fell under the old money bail system and 27% of the arrestees were sent to a magistrate judge. Less than a quarter of all bookings resulted in immediate releases — 14% were cited and released, and 8% were booked at released.
Magistrate judges reviewed 1,213 bookings in the first three weeks of PARPs, assessing them for risk — the chances that the arrestee would commit another crime versus showing up for their arraignment. Of those bookings, judges released just 36%. The other 64% were ordered to be held until arraignment.
Presiding Judge Samantha Jessner argued that the new system of deciding whether to hold arrestees in jail based on a risk assessment as opposed to the old, "arbitrary" system of whether the arrestee could afford money bail is "much safer at protecting the community
"Based on early data, there is no doubt that this risk assessment-based system is effective, and that community safety is enhanced," Jessner said.
The court's policy of limiting money bail was announced in July, about a month after a Superior Court judge issued an injunction blocking the use of pre-arraignment cash bail for low level offenses. Slayton played down the links between the injunction and PARPs.
"The process of getting to where the court went was based on years of experience," he said at the press conference. In part, he explained, the court's Covid-era emergency bail schedule, in which most low-level offenders were released without bail, convinced them that zero bail was "no worse than any system before it."
Two days before PARPs went into effect, 12 cities, including Whittier and Palmdale, filed a lawsuit trying to stop it, arguing the policy would lead to a "significant increase in criminals released back into the community.” A hearing on a motion for a preliminary injunction in that case has been scheduled for Nov. 17.
When asked about the lawsuit, Slayton said the "code of ethics prevents us from commenting" on it, but added, "It appears so far that PARPs are working as we anticipated they would, providing public safety benefits."
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