Aug. 22, 2018

SB 10 (Hertzberg) – Bail Reform.  SB 10, as amended, passed off of the Assembly Floor 41-27 on August 20 and passed off of the Senate Floor on August 21. The SB 10 amendments : (1) strike the language of the legislation; (2) repeal all current bail provisions beginning in 2019; (3) enact a pre-trial assessment system within Judicial Council; and, (4) provide that Judicial Council or a local agency, such as probation, can perform pre-trial assessments. CSAC will continue to provide udpates as this bill moves through the legislative process.

AB 2720 (Waldron) – This bill would authorize county probation departments to use the Juvenile Reentry Grant Special Account for rehabilitative services for persons who have been discharged from a juvenile court’s jurisdiction for up to two years after dismissal. The Juvenile Reentry Grant Special Account was established to provide resources for county probation departments who assumed new populations and workload to supervise and assist with programming for youth returning from the State Division of Juvenile Justice facilities. This measure is unclear as to how this would be operationalized since it would allow expenditure of funds for a population that is no longer under the jurisdiction of the court or county. CSAC is opposed to this measure and very concerned about how the funds would be allocated, overseen, and managed to ensure the funding is meeting its intended use. AB 2720 passed off of the Senate Floor 39-0.

SB 931 (Hertzberg) – This bill would amend the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act to specify that custody status cannot be used as the sole reason to postpone the psychiatric conservatorship evaluation process. Under existing law and practice, individuals suffering from severe mental illness often find themselves confined in the county jail for substantial periods of time, and are not evaluated for conservatorship status and appropriate treatment options until the conclusion of their criminal case.  Delaying conservatorship evaluations often has the effect of keeping these persons in custody longer than necessary. SB 931 seeks to address this issue by prohibiting a conservatorship investigator from failing to schedule an investigation based solely upon the custody status of the individual. CSAC supports SB 931. SB 931 passed off of the Assembly Floor 80-0.

SB 1303 (Pan) – This bill, as amended, mandates that non-charter counties with a population of 500,000 or greater either: (1) abolish the office of the coroner or the sheriff’s coroner’s office and replace it with the office of the medical examiner; or (2) adopt a policy requiring referral of death investigations to a county that has an office of medical examiner for any case where there is a potential conflict, “including, but not limited to law-enforcement officer-related deaths, deaths of family members of law-enforcement, deaths related to the coroner’s or sheriff’s coroner’s family, or deaths related to employees of those offices or family members of those employees.” CSAC and UCC are opposed to SB 1303, which is waiting to be heard on the Assembly Floor.

SB 1106 (Hill) – This measure, as amended, extends the operative date of the existing Transitional Age Youth pilot program to January 1, 2022, and expands the scope of the program to include Ventura County. By extending the existing Transitional Age Youth pilot program until 2022 and including Ventura County to the list of authorized counties, SB 1106 will allow more young adult offenders to be housed in local juvenile detention facilities, instead of adult local detention facilities, where they will have access to these services. CSAC supports SB 1106, which is set to be heard on the Assembly Floor.

AB 372 (Stone, M) – This bill, as amended, would create a pilot program that would allow the counties of Napa, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz and Yolo to offer an alternative to the batterer intervention program.  AB 372 would allow the pilot counties to take an alternative and innovative approach to the current, statutorily required 52 week batterer intervention program and is the first step in assessing whether there are treatment programs that do not necessarily comply with current statutory requirements, that more effectively address the criminogenic needs of batterers and result in reducing recidivism. CSAC is the Sponsor of AB 372, which passed off of the Assembly Floor 39-0.