From The Appeal:
by Angel Lopez
In April 2020, shortly after the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Los Angeles County Superior Court adopted the "emergency bail schedule" (EBS) policy, which protected people charged with most misdemeanors and low-level crimes from being jailed pretrial. The impact was significant. Instead of staying in jail because they couldn’t afford bail, thousands of people got to keep their jobs, continue going to school, take care of relatives, access needed medication, and experience everyday freedoms.
The EBS was a clear policy success. As was the case when New York and Houston enacted similar measures, rearrest rates remained the same and people continued to show up to their court dates. In fact, more people attended their court dates and taxpayers saved millions of dollars as a result. But the EBS’s future is currently precarious, at-best: It was rescinded, then reinstated, by multiple Los Angeles County Superior Court judges and has not been permanently written into law.
It should be. I know the bail policy worked—because I was one of the many Angelenos who benefited from it. Continue reading
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