SACRAMENTO — Gov. Jerry Brown on Tuesday signed sweeping legislation to eliminate cash bail in California. The change, which will take effect in October 2019, goes further than any other state in the country to remove money from pretrial detention.

“Today, California reforms its bail system so that rich and poor alike are treated fairly,” Brown said in a statement.

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Under Senate Bill 10, California will replace bail with “risk assessments” of individuals and nonmonetary conditions of release. Counties will establish local agencies to evaluate any individual arrested on felony charges for their likelihood of returning for court hearings and their chances of re-arrest.

Bill supporters including co-authors Assemblyman Rob Bonta, D-Alameda, and state Sen. Robert Hertzberg, D-Van Nuys, state Supreme Court Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye, all called the signing a transformative moment toward a more fair criminal-justice system in California.

“Abolishing money bail and replacing it with a risk-based system will enhance justice and safety,” Bonta said in a statement. “For too long, our system has allowed the wealthy to purchase their freedom regardless of their risk, while the poor who pose no danger languish in jail. No more. Freedom and liberty should never be pay to play.”

“This is a transformative day for our justice system,” Cantil-Sakauye said in a statement. “Our old system of money bail was outdated, unsafe, and unfair.”

But SB 10 has also strangely aligned bail bonds firms, and the activists who want to eliminate their industry, in opposition.

For early architects of the bill, like the San Jose-based civil-rights group Silicon Valley De-Bug, the version signed by Brown bears no resemblance to what they envisioned as a way to reduce the numbers of the people jailed before their trials simply because they can’t afford bail, a population that disproportionately skews toward people of color.

“This isn’t a gutted version of our bill, it’s a wholesale different bill,” De-Bug Director Raj Jayadev said. “SB 10 was going to take out the obstacles from people’s liberty, like money bail and mandatory exclusions. This just replaces the exploitative money bail system with a preventative system that will lead to an increase, not decrease, in pretrial detention.”

According to SB 10, a person whose risk to public safety and risk of failure to appear is determined to be “low” would be released with the least restrictive nonmonetary conditions possible. “Medium-risk” individuals could be released or held depending on local standards. “High-risk” individuals would remain in custody until their arraignment, as would anyone who has committed certain sex crimes or violent felonies, is arrested for driving under the influence for the third time in less than 10 years, is already under supervision by the courts or has violated any conditions of pretrial release in the previous five years.

Advocates of abolishing bail contend that too many defendants remain stuck in custody because they cannot afford to bail out, effectively creating unequal justice based on wealth. California is at the forefront of a national campaign to end money bail that has also recently seen states like New Jersey and New Mexico adopt polices to circumvent the for-profit bail industry, though none had yet eliminated bail completely.

David Quintana, a lobbyist for the California Bail Agents Association, said the industry is already mobilizing to block the new law from taking effect, though he declined to discuss the specifics.

“You don’t eliminate an industry and expect those people to go down quietly,” he said. “Every single weapon in our arsenal will be fired.”

SB 10 was approved by the Legislature last week, after a nearly two-year push, with largely Democratic support. But it faced heavy opposition from the bail industry and some former supporters of the bill, who said significant amendments to the final version would unjustly expand the number of suspects jailed while awaiting trial.

The American Civil Liberties Union of California, an original co-sponsor of the measure along with De-Bug, and other organizations pointed to provisions giving judges greater discretion during the arraignment hearing to decide whether to release an individual and on what conditions. SB 10 also introduces a process for the prosecution to file for “preventive detention,” blocking the defendant’s release pending a trial, if they believe there are no conditions that would ensure public safety or their appearance in court.

Jayadev called it a troubling catch-all clause that effectively negates all of the benchmarks meant to make the system fair.

“That allows anyone to be detained pretrial. It’s such a malleable descriptor,” he said. “What is so ironic about it is that these are all, by law, legally innocent people. Legally innocent people who can and will be incarcerated with no avenue to freedom.”

Staff writer Robert Salonga and Sacramento Bee reporter Alexei Koseff contributed to this report.