Gov. Brown, surrounded by supporters of the legislation, signed Senate Bill 10 earlier today. Photo: Governor’s Office.

Earlier today Gov. Jerry Brown put his signature to Senate Bill 10, and thusly made California the first state in the nation to do away entirely with the cash bail system.

Starting in October 2019, people arrested and booked into jail anywhere in California will no longer have to put up cash to be released from incarceration. Rather – and broadly speaking – the vast majority of people suspected of misdemeanor offenses will be cited and released, pending trial. People arrested on felony violations may be released or held without bail, depending on whether or not officials judge them a threat to public safety or a flight risk. (Read the full text of SB 10, along with legislative analyses, at this link.)

“Today, California reforms its bail system so that rich and poor alike are treated fairly,” Brown said was quoted as saying in a press release after he signed the new legislation.

State Sen. Mike McGuire and Assemblymember Jim Wood both voted in favor of the bill.

The new legislation will obviously dramatically alter the operations of California’s criminal justice system when it takes effect next year. But several officials the Outpost spoke with this afternoon agree on one thing: Humboldt is already a little bit ahead of this particular curve.

Sheriff Billy Honsal, who manages the Humboldt County jail, was quick to point out that his department has long employed a risk-assessment matrix to judge the threat of releasing particular inmates on their own recognizance. (It has been forced to do so because the jail has frequently been near or at capacity.) In that sense, Humboldt County is already doing something very similar to the system required by the new law.

Honsal was less concerned about implementing that system, and of the end of cash bail, than some of the other details of Senate Bill 10, such as limits on how long the jail can hold someone arrested for smaller crimes, such as driving under the influence or public intoxication.

“They’re mandating now that those misdemeanor offenders get out within 12 hours, which is something that is totally ridiculous,” Honsal said. Often times, Honsal said, a person arrested for public intoxication will take longer than that to detox — and when they do, he said, it sometimes emerges that they require attention from mental health professionals. What happens if the jail can’t hold someone long enough to make that assessment?

Along the same lines, Honsal was worried for his office’s policy — adopted in the wake of the murder of Father Eric Freed — to hold some people until morning, even if they were otherwise eligible for release in the middle of the night, if they display signs of mental incapacity and can’t be released into the custody of a friend or relative.

People on the ground should have some latitude in making decisions like these, Honsal argues. But he said that he has been in touch with local legislators, and he’s hopeful that they can pass some “clean-up” language to account for such scenarios before the bill takes effect.

Shaun Brenneman, the county’s interim chief probation office, likewise told the Outpost that was optimistic that adopting the no-cash-bail system wouldn’t entail a very steep learning curve for Humboldt County. His office, which will be in charge of determining whether or not particular felons should be held or released, may have to ramp up staffing a bit, but it is already very familiar with the risk assessment tools used to make decisions like these.

He said that the first order of business was to get all the affected agencies together to look at historical data to figure out exactly how much will be changed by the new system — how many of the people we arrest today would have to be treated differently under the new system? But with more than a year to figure this out, Brenneman wasn’t worried.

“If we can figure out criminal realignment, we can figure out this, I’m pretty certain,” Brenneman said. “We have all the pieces in place.”



Eureka Police Chief Steve Watson told the Outpost that he hadn’t looked into the issue in depth and wasn’t really prepared to make a complete statement on the subject. His first impression of the bill, he said, was a fear that it may go too far — that it may represent an “overreach” of the type he has become accustomed to in attempts to reform California’s criminal justice system. Still, he said that he was well aware that proponents of the bill have a good point to make when they talk about the iniquities of the cash bail system — that it delivers unequal results to wealthy and poor offenders.

One person who doesn’t have mixed feelings on the matter is Steve Payton, owner of Bill Davidson Bail Bonds. The end of cash bail effectively puts California’s entire bail bonds system out of business. Payton, 62, said he has worked at the company for six years and bought it from the previous owner at the beginning of this year. This new legislation spells his financial ruin, he said.

“If he signed it, I hope he drops dead,” Payton said, after being informed by the Outpost of the governor’s action. “He just put me and my family in the poorhouse. I’m going to lose my house, and I’m going to move out of this godforsaken, liberal-ass state.”