My View: Reisig Takes to Fox News Attacking Zero Bail

By David M. Greenwald
Executive Editor

Woodland, CA – It has been just over a week since Yolo County DA Jeff Reisig released his report on the impact of zero bail.  As the Vanguard noted last week, this was a flawed analysis, but it aligns the agenda of Jeff Reisig with that of Fox News.

Fox News commentator: “Here’s what you found, of the 595 individuals released 420 were rearrested for new crimes. That’s a 70.6% recidivism rate. And of those 103 offenders, 20% were rearrested for violent crimes, including murder, attempt, murder, kidnapping, robbery, carjacking, and domestic violence.”

Jeff Reisig: “It’s a staggering number. I mean, it frankly is, it shocks the conscience to think that that many new crimes were committed by these people, uh, released on zero bail and all of the new victims. That’s what I thought about all of the new victims who had been created as a result of this policy.”

As Reisig explained, “Well, during 2020, in the first part of 2021, we were under a mandated zero bail policy because of court actions and local actions as well, not my choosing, but zero bail was the rage in California during the pandemic. And as a result, you had people who were being arrested, for all types of crimes, including felonies and being immediately released into the community with no supervision, no oversight, no mandated treatment, no ankle monitor, no conversation with the victims of their original crimes. They were just being dumped out of the jails. That’s the number that we have, 70% re-offended, some within days, most within six months.”

He later added, “It’s really outrageous to me. I mean, to watch this happen around the country and places like New York and, and other states, and, and right here in California, this movement by certain people to make zero bail, the law is ongoing as we speak. There are conversations going on in the state capital, which is right next to my county in Sacramento, where they’re trying to put this into the law again, even though the voters rejected it in California, they rejected zero bail in 2020. So this is bad policy. It’s a get out of jail free card. People are getting really hurt, even murdered, because of these policies. And we just need to scratch it. This is not a good policy.”

There are a few additional problems with his response—that is over and above the general problem with the data analysis, or lack thereof.

As I noted last week and again earlier this week with respect to the NRA article, they present raw recidivism rates without providing a baseline for those rates.

We have no way to evaluate based on the data released whether the numbers they are seeing are in fact normal.  So we have an overall recidivism rate that actually closely mirrors the rate released by the DA’s office.  He wants us to believe this is “staggering” but, in fact, it may be close to normal for the criminal legal system.

The DA simply states that 70 percent of offenders released under zero bail were later rearrested.

Not only does that fail to tell us how many get rearrested without zero bail, but because they present a variable timeline, it also doesn’t tell us even how many were out of custody who would not have been without zero bail.

In short, we have no idea whether zero bail made things worse, as the DA at least implies—or better.

The danger of putting out data without analysis is that it can get picked up and repeated verbatim without context. Enter Fox News.

Reisig said that “we were under a mandated zero bail policy because of court actions and local actions as well, not my choosing, but zero bail was the rage in California during the pandemic.”

In fact, in March of 2020, Melinda Aiello, the Assistant Chief Deputy DA, sent out the DA’s policy on the statewide emergency bail schedule.

Aiello wrote that “we recognize the on-going need to maintain a reasonable jail population and after consultation with County Counsel encourage the court to return to its Emergency and Provisional Bail Schedule that became effective March 26, 2020.”

The DA did allow, “It is further recognized that the situation is continuing to evolve and there may be need for further examination and changes…”

While the DA made frequent releases on recidivism and re-arrests during the pandemic, at no point did he request the county to stop the policy—in fact Yolo County allowed the policy to continue one year after the judicial counsel no longer mandated it, and the DA never requested it end.

So, to say this was not his choosing is largely false.

Second, in his answer he noted there is a movement to make zero bail the law ongoing.  There is a movement to do bail reform—that is not the same as zero bail.

As I have noted a number of times, the flaw with zero bail, if there is one, is that they are simply releasing people without support, supervision or services—that’s a recipe for disaster.  But it’s also not what any of the bail reform proposals have suggested.

The DA did allow, “It is further recognized that the situation is continuing to evolve and there may be need for further examination and changes…”

It’s telling that Reisig would go on Fox News, of all places, to tout his opposition to zero bail and really bail reform itself.