L.A. County District Attorney George Gascón announced sweeping reforms after being sworn into office. (photo courtesy of George Gascón)

Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón is wasting no time in his efforts to reform the criminal justice system.

Precisely one minute after being sworn in as the county’s new district attorney at noon on Dec. 8, an email was sent to those working in his office – the largest prosecutor’s office in the nation – announcing a multitude of reforms, including the elimination of the cash bail system.

“It is time to change course and implement a system of justice that will enhance our safety and humanity,” Gascón said after taking the oath of office. “Today, we are confronting the lie that stripping entire communities of their liberties somehow made us safer. And we’re doing it with science, research and data.”

He said that experts estimated that hundreds of incarcerated individuals would be eligible to be released under this new pretrial release policy. Gascón repeatedly promised to lower incarceration rates and reduce recidivism during his campaign.

Per Gascón’s directive, prosecutors will no longer request cash bail for any misdemeanor, non serious or non violent felony offense and starting Jan. 1, 2021, Gascón said he planned to roll out directives and mechanisms to eliminate money bail in its entirety.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl, 3rd District, lauded the new policy. In November, voters passed county Measure J, which directs the Board of Supervisors to allocate 10% of money from its general fund to alternatives to incarceration. Last month, the supervisors approved the creation of a 17-member advisory committee to oversee Measure J funds.

“The requirement of cash bail contributes to overcrowding in our jails, has a disproportionate impact on communities of color and hasn’t been shown to improve criminal justice outcomes, so it is high time that we adopted common sense policies that do not incarcerate people simply because they are too poor to post bail,” Kuehl said.

According to Alicia Virani, the Gilbert Foundation Director of the Criminal Justice Program at UCLA School of Law, Gascón’s directive is a change in the “right” direction.

“In the criminal legal system, it’s a real culture change within the judiciary,” she said. “It’s definitely a new day for Los Angeles in terms of criminal justice, but it remains to be seen if people in the court system are ready for that new day.”

She highlighted how meaningful the change would be throughout the county in the lives of families to have a loved one, who is “legally presumed innocent,” be allowed to return home, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It’s been shown that communities of color have higher amounts of bail set than their white counterparts in the criminal legal system,” Virani said. “If judges go along and agree with the request to release people on their own recognizance, we should see … more people of color being released pre-trial or at least at the same rates as their white counterparts.”

While voters did not pass Proposition 25 in November, which would have replaced cash bail for some criminal offenses with a risk assessment system, Virani noted that it didn’t mean that residents wholly opposed eliminating cash bail.

“You can look at Prop. 25 and say it was replacing cash bail with a system that would have led to the same inequities that we see already in the criminal justice system, and the voters wanted a third way forward,” she said.

Despite being widely publicized since Gascón made his announcement last week, Virani said that most media had been incorrectly reporting the story by “overstating” the mandate that the bail system was no longer in place.

“The district attorney does not have the power to eliminate cash bail,” she clarified. “What Gascón’s policy does is to direct his deputy district attorneys to not ask for cash bail in certain situations.”

Historically, she said, the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department has set bail according to the bail schedule, then the individuals show up in court with attorneys, where a judge makes a decision.

In response to the change, the Los Angeles Police Protective League, the police union representing the Los Angeles Police Department, immediately voiced its opposition.

“As homicides, shooting victims and shots fired into occupied homes soar in Los Angeles, it’s disturbing that Gascón’s first act in office is to explore every avenue possible to release from jail those responsible for this bloodshed,” the league’s board of directors said in a statement. “The new D.A. talks a good game, but his plans will do nothing but further victimize Los Angeles residents, especially Black and Hispanic residents who currently make up 70% of violent crime victims. These victims and law-abiding residents lost a voice today while criminals and gang members gained an ally in the prosecutor’s office. We sincerely hope Gascón realizes quickly that setting L.A. County on the same path he put San Francisco on will be disastrous.”

Gascón, whose major criticism during the campaign was that crime levels soared while he was serving as San Francisco’s district attorney, said the reason for that crime increase came down to police not doing their jobs.

“The district attorney doesn’t make arrests,” Gascón said, underscoring that the rise in crime was predominately property crimes.

Gascón said that during a four-year span, San Francisco had around 81,000 car break-ins with a total of 13 arrests made for them.

“Basically, there was complete impunity,” he said.

In addition to advising his deputies not to ask for bail, Gascón released a host of new directives, including the immediate end of seeking the death penalty and transferring minors to adult court. In addition, the district attorney’s office will stop charging a number of low-level offenses associated with poverty, addiction, mental illness and homelessness, instead working to divert individuals into behavioral health services.

Deputy DAs were also directed to immediately stop seeking to bring victims found in civil contempt before the court, as well as to stop filing sentence enhancements.

On Dec. 15, Councilman Paul Koretz, 5th District, introduced a resolution opposing Gascón’s recent directive to remove sentence enhancements when prosecuting hate crimes. Koretz, citing research done by the Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations published in 2019, underscored that the most recent data showed that the county was experiencing the highest number of violent hate crimes in a decade, with 24% of all hate crimes in the county committed during 2019 having targeted Black individuals.

Beverly Hills interim Police Chief Dominick Rivetti also voiced displeasure with the policy change, underscoring that California voters determined last month that they wanted to keep the cash bail system in place when voting down Prop. 25.  In L.A. county, 55% of voters cast their ballots against the state measure.

“I believe what the D.A.’s office is doing is contrary to what the voters just elected to do in November,” Rivetti said. “My opinion is that it’s just going to continue a revolving door of criminals being released. I think it’s just going to add to a broken criminal justice system here in California.”