Free Options Instead Of Bail Campaign Underway In County

SANTA CLARA COUNTY, CA —Santa Clara County officials launched a campaign Tuesday to inform criminal detainees of free alternatives to bail as part of a challenge to safely reduce jail usage.

The "No Cost Release" multi-lingual campaign's message will be spread by video, public access TV, the internet, posters and brochures inside jails and throughout the community.

County officials said the effort is part of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation's Safety and Justice Challenge, a nationwide initiative to reduce over-incarceration.

Santa Clara County Chief Public Defender Molly O'Neal said, "In my mind, it's long overdue. I think it ought to happen all over the state and all over the country."

Free services have been available through the public defender's office since 1965. Pretrial services have been available since 1969, according to Javier Aguirre, the county's director of re-entry services. He said detainees should be screened for pre-trial services.

"This is the first opportunity for the county to do a comprehensive information campaign in English, Spanish and Vietnamese to inform individuals who have been arrested, inform their families and the public about free pre-trial release alternatives to paying for bail," Aguirre said.

The campaign's goal is to tell detainees and people awaiting trial of their free pre-trial release options, rights to free criminal defense attorneys and access to free re-entry services.

The MacArthur Foundation awarded Santa Clara County a $50,000 grant to design and test reforms to safely reducing jail usage as well as racial and ethnic inequality in the county justice system. The county is one of 20 jurisdictions to receive a grant.

Until now, the only information about commercial bail bonds and private criminal attorneys was available inside county jails.

In the past few years, alternatives to bail have become increasingly popular as county officials and others see how hard it is for low-income and homeless detainees to pay bail and get out of jail before trial.

O'Neal said that jail time jeopardizes a detainee's employment, which can lead to homelessness, affects a detainee's family and hinders their ability to work with an attorney to defend themselves.

O'Neal said in a statement that it "imposes an artificial incentive to plead guilty in order to get out, regardless of guilt or innocence."

Research shows that detainees are more likely to be convicted, less likely to have their charges reduced and more likely to be sentenced to jail or prison, with longer sentences -- even when the seriousness of the
charges and their criminal histories are equal -- than defendants who have been released.

Detaining someone is also costly for the county. It costs $159 per day to confine someone in jail compared to $15 per day for pre-trial supervision.

The county's independent Audit Management Division estimated that between July 1 and December 31, 2011, the county could have saved $31.3 million in detention costs if detainees who were eligible were released on
their own recognizance.

— Bay City News; Image via Shutterstock