The knock on the door sounded like a police knock. Anthony Robles was laying on a thin roll-up mattress on the floor of his grandmother’s tiny apartment scrolling through social media. Beside him was a backpack and a small dresser where he kept his clothes and other belongings.

His grandmother, confused, answered the door to find law enforcement officers from several agencies waiting to conduct a search of her home. At the time, 23-year-old Robles was serving a two-year probation sentence, which meant the officers did not need a warrant to conduct the search.

Anthony Robles was arrested for probation violation after law enforcement made an unannounced search of his grandmother's home.
Photo courtesy of James Takamatsu.

When the officers found a small bag of marijuana, Robles was handcuffed and taken to jail – pot was illegal in California at the time in 2016. He served a mandatory 10 days for violating the terms of his probation and then some more for the new drug possession charge.

Robles had been through this process before and had nearly failed out of community college, likely disqualifying his UCLA application and dashing his dream. This time, he says, the days he spent in jail kept him from attending orientation at California State University, L.A., where he’d ended up enrolling. While sitting in jail, Robles was convinced his chances of becoming the first member of his family to graduate from college were slipping away.

Robles’ experience of becoming mired in a repetitive cycle of probation, violation and jail could become more widespread as criminal legal reforms take effect in Los Angeles – including the elimination of cash bail. The County, with help from state budget grants, has invested millions of dollars into new pretrial release programs that use electronic monitors like GPS trackers and at-home drug and alcohol tests to ensure defendants diverted from jails appear for court dates and avoid reoffense.

Detractors, including activists, researchers and former probationers, say the program’s surveillance approach brings incarceration into defendants’ homes and restricts probationers’ ability to build the foundations of a healthy lifestyle. They’re also concerned by the program’s expansion of risk assessment tools – algorithms that predict a defendant’s chances of reoffending or of absconding.

In an effort to reduce mass incarceration, the California State Legislature approved a 2021 budget bill that funded a statewide Pretrial Release Program, by expanding diversion programs and increasing the use of risk assessment tools and electronic monitors. Most of the nearly $17 million allocated for the program in Los Angeles was passed to the L.A. County Probation Department. Currently, the department oversees some 80,000 probationers – more than any other county probation department in the U.S..

In May of this year, the L.A. County Superior Court announced it will adjust bail schedules beginning in November. The change almost entirely eliminates money bail for defendants accused of misdemeanors and non-violent felonies and directs courts to book and release defendants, release them on their own recognizance or release them on an electronic monitor.

Aris Mangasarian, a University of Southern California law student who was previously incarcerated and has been on probation, says he believes these programs could be effective with the right oversight. “Pretrial electronic monitoring offers a promising option for fairness and equity in our criminal justice system,” Mangasarian wrote in an email to Annenberg Media. “Its cost-effectiveness provides an economic alternative to the expensive practice of housing individuals in jails or prisons.”

The release program’s direct impact on the overall jail population is difficult to measure at this point. But, a final report by the Judicial Council of California analyzing the success of its 17-county Pretrial Pilot Program found some successes in diverting defendants from jail and increasing court appearances. The council’s report found a nearly 7% drop in failure to appear for misdemeanors but a 2.5% increase for felonies statewide.

Dwight Thompson, a 23-year veteran of the L.A. County Probation Department – which administers the Release Program – and a Deputy Probation Officers’ Union rep. says ankle monitors help prevent absconds. “We can monitor [probationers’] whereabouts, and we can monitor what they’re doing in the community,” he says. “And we try to make sure that with that monitoring system they’re able to appear.”

Emmett Sanders, who spoke at a virtual town hall meeting hosted by the L.A. County Probation Oversight Commission last month, has experience adjusting to life on a monitor after serving a 22-year prison sentence. “I was supposed to find a way to reconnect with my family, get identification… find housing, all of these other things that you need to do to actually survive in this world,” says Sanders who now works as a Policy and Advocacy Associate at Prison Policy Initiative. “When I did get a job, I was terrified that I was going to miss the bus and not make it home and get violated, or that I would be in a car and the car would break down and I would get violated.”

Sheila Natt, another participant at the virtual town hall who wore an ankle monitor as part of a probation sentence as a teenager, says she was always looking over her shoulder, worried she would do something she didn’t know was a violation. “I never knew, you know, when it would go off or what could set it off,” she says. “If I made it [home] one second late, what would happen?”

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An individual on probation can be re-incarcerated for three primary reasons: Failure to appear, a new arrest and not complying with the conditions of their release. A report by the UCLA Law School’s Criminal Justice Program that analyzed data from the L.A. County’s Electronic Monitoring Program (the county’s longest-running electronic monitoring program) found that non-compliance was by far the most common reason for termination. In 2020, according to the report, 94% of all program terminations were for “non-compliance.”

The “non-compliance” designation can include curfew violations, leaving home before an approved schedule permits, failing to provide adequate work verification, failing to answer phone calls while at home and failing to charge monitoring devices among others.

Cash Bail Reform: Making the Case.
Photo courtesy of Carol M Highsmith.

Alicia Virani, the UCLA report’s author, says she believes the bail schedule reforms set to take effect in November could overwhelm the pretrial system making electronic monitoring – sometimes referred to as EM – the default. It could also mean “people would be placed on EM prior to their arraignment and without a lawyer present,” Verani wrote in an email to Annenberg Media. “If the person's arraignment is delayed, this could mean that EM or any other pretrial release conditions could persist without a person being able to access the courts or a lawyer to modify their conditions.”

Thompson is also worried about the impact new bail schedules could have on his department but is more concerned that defendants will be released without appropriate guidelines. “With the no cash bail system, we’re giving everyone an opportunity to be released on their own recognizance without the aid of any type of community check,” he says.

Another pressure point on the pretrial release system vulnerable to the new bail schedule are risk assessments. The 2021 budget bill directed courts to develop and expand the use of actuarial algorithms (as opposed to machine learning algorithms or artificial intelligence) often owned and developed by private companies.

Ambrose Brooks S., an organizer and policy analyst at Dignity and Power Now – an organization that advocates for incarcerated people and their families – says risk assessment tools are “inherently biased” because they use metrics based on data collected by law enforcement and courts, like police contact, arrests, and previous failure to appear. Their argument is, for example, that because Black motorists are five times more likely to be stopped by LAPD, risk assessment tools will reflect that same bias.

A study completed by the Judicial Council for the Pretrial Pilot Program – which used risk assessment tools – found that Black defendants were 9% more likely to be released on their own recognizance or on a pretrial monitor than before the pilot program. Hispanic defendants were nearly 6% more likely to be released while white defendants were nearly 5% more likely to be released under the pilot program. The report did not distinguish between own recognizance release and electronic monitor release by race.

Brooks S., who uses the pronoun they, also said they’re concerned about how far the use of risk assessment algorithms will go. “If we’re using risk assessment tools now to make a determination about somebody’s freedom, who’s to say that artificial intelligence actually won’t be the entity to be making that risk assessment a few years down the line?” they say. “That’s something that we need to stop right now.”

How the L.A. County court system will address the potential adverse impacts of the changing system remains to be seen. But at least one thing is for certain; Anthony Robles will be following closely.

Robles was involved in the establishment of the Probation Oversight Commission which seeks to hold the L.A. Department of Probation accountable.
Photo courtesy of Anthony Robles.

Since he was arrested at his grandmother’s apartment, Robles has found his footing. In 2017 he received the CSU Trustees’ Award for Outstanding Achievement — the the university’s highest recognition of student achievement and scholarship. His work with the Youth Justice Coalition led to the elimination of probation fees and associated debt in 2020, and he co-designed L.A.’s first Youth Development Program which launched in 2022 and helps provide care-first services to justice system-involved youth.

For the foreseeable future, he says he’ll keep working to eliminate the use of surveillance and monitoring technology by probation departments in California. He says he hopes L.A. can adopt a system that invests in care-first and community development programs that people going through the system need most.