VICTORY! San Joaquin County Becomes a Leader in Criminal Justice Reform

This week, when the San Joaquin County Board of Supervisors rejected an enormously expensive proposal to double the size of the county's jail, it made the county a shining example of local government favoring "smart on crime" policies that enhance public safety and reduce incarceration over the dusty old "tough on crime" platitudes of the past.

Rather than commit the cash-strapped county to building a new 1,280-bed jail facility that would cost well over half a billion dollars during the next decade to staff and run, the supervisors embraced more effective solutions to crime and jail overcrowding.

For years, San Joaquin County has operated with deficiencies in its criminal justice system. For example, a failure to adequately assess individuals booked into the jail to determine whether they were safe to release while waiting for their court dates led to the jail's pre-trial population jumping from 545 to 900 since 2000. This decades' long practice of detaining pretrial defendants because they are too poor to post bail not only takes up jail space that should be reserved for individuals who pose a higher risk to public safety, but also thwarts the presumption of innocence and the right to bail guaranteed by both the Eighth Amendment and our state constitution.

On Tuesday, however, the supervisors charted a new way forward for the county. They endorsed the implementation of a pretrial program that would allow defendants who do not pose a risk to public safety to continue working, going to school and living with their families until they appear in court. They also acknowledged that the money saved by not building a behemoth of a new jail would be better spent on community-based programs, like substance abuse treatment, counseling and job training, which are proven to help sentenced individuals get back on their feet and stay out of the criminal justice system for good.

Hopefully the rest of the state is watching. For too long, California has irrationally relied on incarceration as the primary way to address crime, especially non-violent crimes like drug possession. California will continue to be plagued with overcrowded jails and prisons and a nearly 70 percent recidivism rate unless the legislature agrees to make the kinds of front-end sentencing reforms that will eliminate harsh penalties that do nothing to address repeat offending and, in many cases, only make reoffending more likely. And leaders at both the state and county levels must provide people with opportunities to address the underlying issues that lead them to get rearrested if they're going to be truly serious about creating a lasting reduction in the number of people behind bars.

The rest of the state should take a cue from San Joaquin, commit to common-sense reforms and put an end to mass incarceration in California.

Lillian Chen is a Criminal Justice Fellow with the ACLU of Northern California.