If Santa Clara County Wants to Reduce the Number of People Held in Jail - Bring Back Zero Dollar Bail

Editor's Note: Raj Jayadev outlines why Santa Clara County's use of Zero Dollar Bail during the pandemic is still a reality and should be reinstated.

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Santa Clara County officials have spoken a lot about ways to reduce incarceration in the jails. There has been alternative to incarceration works groups, studies by consultants, and even board resolutions to commit to lowering the numbers of the incarcerated. But one of the most effective approaches to significantly reduce the number of people held in the jail has already been in place in the county just a few years ago. Created during the height of COVID, due to a state mandate, Santa Clara County changed its policy around pretrial detention to a process now called “zero dollar bail.” The policy bottoms out the bail schedule by changing most misdemeanors and lower level felonies to a zero dollar bail amount. This means that people without the money to pay for the normal bail amount, which would be in the thousands of dollars, would be able to avoid a pretrial jail detention.

This change led to the largest reduction in jail numbers in decades. But in 2022, without explanation, the Santa Clara County court ended zero dollar bail. As expected, there has since been thousands of people who have been incarcerated who otherwise would have been out of jail if the county just maintained a zero dollar bail policy.

In 2025, which all the policy discussions and brainstorming by county officials on how to reduce the amount of people in jail, the solutions don’t aren’t necessarily only newer or untested ideas. In this case Santa Clara only needs to bring back what it knows works - zero dollar bail.

During the time initial months during zero dollar bail (or the Emergency Bail Schedule) in 2020 in Santa Clara County, De-Bug organizers would be regularly standing outside of the jails with care packages, phones to give out, and rides to where ever people needed to go as they were released from jail. We knew that people, who never should have been in jail to begin with, and were only being held due to not having enough money for bail, could use support during a global pandemic.

That reality - that people should not be held in a jail just because they can’t afford bail is as pressing today as it was during the height of the COVID pandemic. People held in the Santa Clara County jail still suffer irreversible harm, even for the few days before their first court date, they still face dangers to their health, they still may even die in that jail.

So despite the most apparent threat of COVID not being as acute, the County, for the same reasons as before, should bring back the zero dollar bail policy. The basic rationale - that no one she be held in jail because of the amount of money they have - holds true today as it did a few years ago.

At the time it was initially introduced by a state mandate, zero dollar bail was implemented across California with the premise that over-incarceration was exceptionally dangerous to those inside the jails and would cause irreparable harm for people once they were out. That reality, with or without a pandemic, is still true today - and the need to have policies that reduce incarceration are as urgent now as it was then.

The other important lesson from the zero dollar bail period was that the other assumption - that releasing people pre-arraignment would cause an increase in crime, was proven, categorically, to be untrue. That is one important data line, or graph, that wasn’t on the staff presentations, but needs to be acknowledged.

In short, looking back, zero dollar bail reduced incarceration, the devastating toll on people’s lives, without any of the assumed concerns that some in law enforcement stated could be the consequence. This should have been the practice long before COVID. Sidenote, even in places like LA that brought back zero dollar bail recently, there was no surge in the re-arrest rate of those released.

From February to March 2022, in the period when the state dropped the mandate for zero dollar bail, and we maintained the practice in our County, we observed arraignment court in Santa Clara County, San Mateo County, and Alameda County. We found that Santa Clara County's humane decision to extend the zero dollar bail schedule not only made a monumental difference in the jail population itself, to individuals who were able to fight their case from the outside and avoid pretrial caging to begin with, it impacted the trajectory of the rest of their case.

In Santa Clara County, 63% of individuals were released without posting cash bail. In Alameda County, 12.7% were released without posting cash bail. In San Mateo County, 17% of people were released without posting cash bail. By comparing our county to neighboring counties, we found that not only does a zero dollar bail policy protect our community, it sends a strong message about our collective belief that our people should to not be coerced into a criminal conviction because of poverty.

When zero dollar bail was rescinded in Santa Clara County by the court, we reached out to the presiding judge at the time to see if we could discuss the rationale, and was told they would not discuss this community matter with the community. We advocated for zero dollar bail through the Alternatives to Incarceration Work Group and in the discussions to stop the construction of a new jail.

What we saw at the end of zero dollar bail in Santa Clara County, the real toll of those climbing graph points presented by staff, was significant and devastating. People who are held in jail rather than released, lost their jobs, their homes, they lost their belongings if they were houseless. Children were left without their parents in their lives, needed elder care didn’t happen. Lives were destabilized, some that cannot be reconstructed - all within the days in which they were incarcerated from the time of arrest to the arraignment, which may be close to a week depending on the day and time of arrest. Even when people make it to arraignment and are given OR then, the damage has been done.

A study conducted by the James Austin firm (one contracted by the county to project jail population numbers), concluded that re-instating zero dollar bail is the single most significant way to reduce the jail population - he predicted by 350 people. But those projections were in 2022, and there are realities happening now that show that without the re-implementation of zero dollar bail 1) the number of people in jail will increase at an even higher rate than once believed, and 2) that the danger of being in jail is even more threatening.

Due to an increase in punitive state laws, more people are at risk of being arrested and incarcerated for the charges zero-dollar bail responds to. Though not the only law, the passage of Proposition 36 is representative of how expansive and who the legal system will be targeting in the current era - those with mental health needs, substance use charges, and crimes of poverty. In an even more local lens, San Jose policies such as the Responsibility to Shelter, which aims at criminalizing the houseless and those with mental health needs, are signs that arrests for “non-serious” charges will be increasing. It is exactly these type of charges that state and city criminalization policies are enforcing that zero dollar bail addresses - misdemeanors and non-serious felonies.

And today, in 2025, a jail stay, even in a short duration can be lethal. Last year, Santa Clara County had the highest number of deaths in the jails in the past 20 years. Ten people died while in custody under the care of the County. In a recent comment to the San Jose Spotlight, Sheriff Spokesperson Brook Jarosz commented how he was concerned jails deaths could worsen with the passage of Prop. 36. And most recently, on April 26^th 2025, Angelo Spencer, whose family held a moment of silence for in this very room, died after just one day in custody.

And beyond the direct harm people are exposed to due to being held in the Santa Clara jail - there a portion of our Santa Clara community that is doubly punished by forces beyond our local criminal legal system - our immigrant communities. We have never seen this level of aggression from ICE and the federal administration in their attacks of our immigrant communities. As a result, any step taken deeper into the jail system further entrenches immigrants into the ICE enforcement radar, leaving them a target for deportation.

And even more concerning, as the Sheriff will confirm, ICE is now walking into our jails and picking people up upon their release from Elmwood. Four people have been picked up in four weeks in June. Keeping our immigrant community members out of jail is the most effective way to protect them from ICE. Zero dollar bail can be that measure of protection that we have some local control of in the face of federal threats.

In Santa Clara County, those who may suffer due to unnecessary jail detentions, still face extreme dangers. Those threats may not be solely defined by a virus like COVID, but they are persistent and pervasive. Santa Clara County should be responsive to protecting our people in the same way it did during the height of COVID. The County and the court, should bring back zero dollar bail.

Illustration by AD Avila