Half of arrestees released in San Francisco while awaiting trial went on to commit crimes — while one out of six committed violent crimes, according to a new four-year study by the California Policy Lab of UC Berkeley and UCLA.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported:
Roughly half of people charged with crimes and released from jail before their trials in San Francisco in recent years failed to show up for court, and a similar share were accused of committing a new crime while free, a new study found.
More than 1 in 6 defendants allegedly committed a new violent offense, according to the findings from May 2016 to December 2019 published by the California Policy Lab, based at UC Berkeley and UCLA.
…
The data doesn’t include many of the lowest risk defendants who get a citation reminding them to show up at court and are released immediately. Numbers could also be driven in part by homelessness and addiction that can fuel crimes and hinder people from showing up for court. One in three people in San Francisco jails were unhoused and nearly 3 out of 4 had a history of substance use in recent counts.
Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón, who is currently facing a recall effort over his radical criminal justice reforms, was San Francisco District Attorney for almost all of the period covered in the study.
San Francisco ended cash bail for all criminal cases last February under new, even more radical District Attorney Chesa Boudin, and the California Supreme Court ended it in the state this past March for all defendants who cannot afford it. However, voters last November rejected a referendum, Proposition 25, 55% to 44%, that would have ended cash bail entirely in the state.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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