Study session on $0 bail: county, court and advocates debate pretrial release, data gaps and next steps

The Public Safety & Justice Committee held a study session on June 25 to examine reinstating a $0 bail schedule and broader pretrial release policies. County administration, the District Attorney’s Office, the Superior Court, probation and pretrial services staff, and community organizations took part. The session framed $0 bail largely as a pre‑arraignment, operational question that interacts with pretrial services, magistrate review and local citation practices.

Casey Halkin, deputy county executive, described the jurisdictional and historical context: the Judicial Council issued an emergency statewide $0 bail schedule in April 2020 during the COVID pandemic; the county’s superior court extended $0 bail locally through July 2022. Halkin noted that while jail population fell sharply during the pandemic, Santa Clara County has maintained a jail population close to the level on the last day of $0 bail — 2,752 on July 30, 2022 versus about 2,792 on the day administration prepared its slides — and credited collaborative pretrial diversion and backlog reduction efforts for keeping the population from returning to pre‑pandemic highs above 3,000.

Assistant District Attorney David Angel and DA leadership described the…