California Policy Lab

In 2018, the California legislature passed Senate Bill 10 (SB 10) to end the practice of cash bail throughout the state. The law enacted other pretrial reforms, including requiring that counties use a validated risk assessment to inform pretrial release decisions, develop pretrial supervision programs, and release defendants unless detention is necessary for public safety or to guarantee appearance at trial. Implementation of the law has been stalled pending Proposition 25, a referendum on the ballot in November 2020. If the referendum passes and SB 10 is implemented, the law will significantly change pretrial practice throughout the state. However, there is little empirical evidence about how these changes to the pretrial system might affect release rates and jail populations. In this brief, we use detailed data from two counties with different histories of pretrial reform — San Francisco and Sonoma — to estimate the potential effect of the law on release and detention prior to arraignment. To predict the possible effect of SB 10, we posit the following question: If SB 10 had been in effect in 2017 and 2018, how would releases prior to arraignment have changed?

This work has been supported, in part, by the University of California Multicampus Research Programs and Initiatives grant MRP-19-600774.