San Francisco D.A. stops use of cash bail

San Francisco’s new district attorney, Chesa Boudin (D), officially ended his office’s use of money bail for all criminal cases, reports the Huffington Post. Prosecutors at the San Francisco district attorney’s office will no longer ask for cash bail as a condition for pretrial detention under a new policy announced Wednesday. The district attorney’s office will utilize the city’s existing “risk assessment” tool, which uses “objective data” to determine if people pose a “serious threat” to public safety, in which case they can be detained leading up to their trial “regardless of their wealth,” according to a press release from the D.A.’s office. Prosecutors can still seek to have defendants held in detention before trial in cases of serious felonies involving violent acts or sexual assaults, for instance. “For years I’ve been fighting to end this discriminatory and unsafe approach to pretrial detention,” Boudin said of cash bail in the release. “From this point forward, pretrial detention will be based on public safety, not on wealth.” Boudin, 39, sworn into office earlier this month, is a former public defender who ran on a platform of eliminating cash bail, closing jails and combating racism in the criminal justice system. This move, just weeks after his inauguration, fulfills a significant campaign promise. Advocates for bail reform have long argued that money bail creates an unequal system in which poor people are locked up before trial simply because they can’t afford bail and wealthier people accused of the same offenses can stay free until their day in court. Boudin has deep personal experience with the criminal justice system: When he was just about a year old, both of his parents, then members of radical left-wing group the Weather Underground, were sent to prison for driving the getaway car in an infamous 1981 armed robbery in New York. His father is still incarcerated. The district attorney was a leader in the years long effort in San Francisco and California to challenge the cash bail system. At the state level, California residents will be voting the year on whether to eliminate cash bail statewide.