Just the Facts - Waiting for Justice
Heidi • July 9, 2022
COVID delays exacerbated an already sluggish justice process
In March 2021-
- 44,241 people across California are being held in a county jail without being convicted or sentenced for a crime. That’s three quarters of all county inmates.
- At least 1,317 people have been waiting in county jails for more than 3 years, and for 332 of them, it’s been longer than 5 years.
- In Los Angeles County, which has the state’s largest jail population, 1,350 unsentenced people have been behind bars for longer than a year and about 180 have been jailed longer than three years.
- In Sacramento County, 102 of about 2,800 unsentenced inmates have been locked up longer than three years, including 12 people in jail longer than five years.
- Most detainees waiting for justice are people of color. For example, Black people make up roughly 5% of the population of San Francisco, but account for 50% of the 220 inmates jailed for a year or longer.
The Sixth Amendment of the United States states that "In criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial..." Yet it seems universally accepted that, as goes a shameful and all-too-realistic cliche, the wheels of justice grind slowly. Meanwhile, those who remain incarcerated and separated from family, jobs, and lives, the notion of "presumed innocent" is a cruelly forgotten notion. Additionally, the victims of those impacted by crime also face delays, leading to prolonged grief and lack of closure for them or loved ones affected.
For an unprecedented deep dive on this ongoing failure to deliver justice in a timely, constitutionally-assured fashion, and the human stories behind the numbers, go to "Waiting for Justice" by Robert Lewis at Cal Matters.
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