In 2021, the California Supreme Court decided In re Humphrey.
It was supposed to end wealth-based detention. Judges were required to consider ability to pay. Cash bail was to be eliminated as far as using it to keep poor people locked up pretrial. Pretrial freedom was supposed to be the rule — detention the exception.
That was the promise.
But the data tell a very different story.
In this explainer, I walk through what Humphrey actually required, what the UCLA/Berkeley “Coming Up Short” report found, and why pretrial detention has increased in many places since the decision.
If even the state’s highest court cannot shift the structure of pretrial justice, we need to ask a harder question:
Is this confusion — or resistance?
Watch the video for more.
