Riverside and San Bernardino counties, short of judges, consider how to deal with no bail systems

Riverside and San Bernardino counties have both faced an intensifying need for judges as their populations grew in recent years, but the possible elimination of cash bail could put even more pressure on the counties' already strained court resources, said those tasked with finding replacement policies.

Riverside County has seen a 30% population growth over the past decade while San Bernardino County's population increased by 13% over the same period, according to a report published by the Judicial Council of California in 2018. Over the past 30 years, the numbers are even starker, according to the counties' figures: Riverside County's population has more than doubled since 1989 while San Bernardino's population jumped 37%.

But neither county has enough judges to meet this growth. In Riverside, the court has 80 authorized and funded judicial positions though it has an assessed need of 116. Meanwhile, San Bernardino has 88 authorized and funded judge positions but an assessed need of 126. That means the county is only operating with 69% of the judges it requires.

"We're operating always at a deficit in terms of what the assessed need is. It's pretty tremendous," Judge John D. Molloy, a supervising criminal department judge for the Superior Court of Riverside, said Tuesday.

Pressure could increase with the passage of SB 10, which would effectively phase out cash bail in California and is on hold pending a referendum in 2020. Because the legislation would bar arrestees from posting bail, courts would have to review more cases to determine if arrestees are eligible for release.

"Instead of bail just being set ... there'll be more cases that have to be analyzed. In other words, the judicial officer will be looking at each one of them," Molloy said.

In Riverside County, whose probation department has had a pretrial risk assessment system in place alongside a cash bail option since 2012, preparations for SB 10 are under way. On the probation side, officials are investigating how to streamline existing pretrial processes, including interviews and report templates. They are also reviewing existing monitoring strategies for arrestees who have been released on their own recognizance as well as their current assessment tool, the Virginia Pretrial Risk Assessment Instrument.

When SB 10 was approved last year, the county's Justice System Change Initiative, a work group that includes Molloy, projected the law would dramatically increase the amount of work undertaken by the county's probation department.

"It would quadruple the number of staff that we currently have now in order to accommodate the workload," said Teresa Dolstra, division director at the Riverside County Probation Department, adding the staff increase could add several million dollars to annual operating costs. "Let me just clarify ... that is only as it applies to the increased workload to probation. That does not account for the increase to both the sheriff and the courts primarily, and we haven't looked at the impact to each of those agencies or to the public defenders or the DA's office," she said.

In San Bernardino County, there is less certainty about how SB 10 will impact their resources. This is largely due to the fact the county will only start making what County Supervisor Janice Rutherford called a "concentrated effort" to implement a similar system as Riverside's this October. The pilot project, which will also involve the Virginia risk assessment instrument, was forged in response to SB 10.

San Bernardino is the largest county in the United States. "It would be very hard for us to pivot on short notice to a complete no bail system if that's the decision of voters next November," said Rutherford. "We want to have some programming and testing in place already."

The pilot project, which will run at least until the 2020 referendum on SB 10, will help the county determine whether and how much extra staff and other resources -- including funding -- it will need to accommodate the legislation. "We're hoping by starting it in October of this year, we will have the information to be able to project ... by October of next year when it comes out on the ballot," said Eric Raley, a division director in the San Bernardino County Probation Department.

Rutherford noted some of the data will help the county determine the efficacy of the risk assessment tool. "That's going to allow us to tweak that data and gain a better understanding of that population and their needs and the needs of the community," she said.

Still, one thing that will persist whether or not SB 10 moves forward, Rutherford said: San Bernardino County doesn't have enough judges.

"It's not fair to our residents. It deprives them of their constitutional right to receive trial, and I wish it was something our legislators and our governor would focus on," she said. "It's a concern under existing circumstances. It's a concern under all future circumstances."

SB10 requires the state's Department of Finance to work with the Judicial Council and chief probation officers to identify funding needs. The bill includes specific language about funding for the courts for their own expenses, for the courts to contract with probation departments to conduct risk assessments, and funding for probation departments to do pretrial monitoring.