Santa rita jail website trial#

This means there are fewer opportunities for people to have their cases resolved and get out of Santa Rita. And, there’s another problem: Fewer courtrooms are in operation.

Remote court is like remote anything - the Wi-Fi cuts out and people forget to mute before they badmouth their colleagues. Sergeant Kelly proposed another reason people can’t get out of Santa Rita: “Just think of the criminal justice system, like the school system, you know, we're doing it all virtually, the best we can, and it's just not as effective as in-person court.” That might explain part of the rise in Santa Rita’s population but not all of it. But, their data shows that the number of cases that qualify for zero bail, but are having bail set anyways, has only gone up by a few percentage points. I reached out to the District Attorney’s Office and they responded that they were unavailable to be interviewed. According to her, the good will between the two sides that helped lower the number of people in the jail at the start of the pandemic, has been gone since the summer. And people have forgotten about the risk factors that our clients are susceptible to when they're in an area like a jail,” she says. And so it's almost like people stop wearing masks or people get tired of the social distancing. “I think people have become desensitized to the pandemic. But, she says, “As time went on, there became more requests by the District Attorney's Office to step outside of the emergency bail schedule, and more judges were agreeable to step outside of the emergency bail schedule and hold more people in custody.”īrown says that as COVID-19 fatigue set in, she felt the attitude in arraignments shift.

Santa rita jail website trial#

“Judges still retain the ability to hold people if they feel that they're a threat to public safety,” Clark says.Īccording to Alameda County Public Defender Aundrea Brown, at first, DA’s and judges followed the zero bail rule and released people who were accused of less serious offenses to wait for their trial from home. Stephanie Clark, another public defender, describes it like this, “The California Supreme Court and the Judicial Council created an emergency bail schedule early in the pandemic, which reduced bail to zero on a lot of lower level cases.”īy allowing as many people as possible to wait for their next court date at home, the court was trying to protect people from getting COVID-19 in the jail. Many people cannot afford to pay bail, which means if bail is set on their case, they will stay in a jail like Santa Rita.Īt the beginning of shelter-in-place the court made changes to the bail system. That's when a judge decides whether to hold someone in jail, set bail, or let them wait for their next court date at home. The first stop? Criminal court for an arraignment.

It’s important to know a little bit about what happens when someone is arrested. So, if the flow of people going into jail hasn’t changed much, is the reason for Santa Rita’s rising numbers just that it’s harder for people to get out? But, according to data from the DA’s office, there aren’t a lot more people being charged with violent crimes. Last year, there were 102 murders which is the first time in almost a decade that that number reached triple digits. It’s no secret that the number of shootings and homicides in Oakland has risen.

He says, “There's no doubt, I don't care what side of the political spectrum you're on, that there is an increase in crime in every city, every community in the Bay Area.” According to Kelly, rising crime is also contributing to the rising population. Sergeant Kelly says that Santa Rita currently has about “170 individuals who need to go to state prison” in its custody.īut 170 people, is only about one fifth of the total population rise at Santa Rita since May. But during the pandemic, state prisons aren’t accepting any new people. According to Sergeant Kelly, the first reason that the population is going back up is pretty easy to understand: Jails like Santa Rita usually hold some people who’ve been found guilty, and are headed to state prison. The county's Sheriff’s Office oversees Santa Rita Jail. But now, the public information officer for the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office, Sergeant Raymond Kelly says, “You can definitely feel that the jail’s filling up again, and you can see it.” Judges, DAs and public defenders collaborated to release people and encourage law enforcement to arrest fewer people. Criminal courts can be pretty adversarial places, but, for a brief time, COVID-19 united members of the Alameda County court system around a common goal: lowering the number of people in Santa Rita Jail.