One of the key findings was that defendants who were perceived to be Latino had an average bail amount of $157,700 \u2014 more than 15 times higher than white defendants and nearly three times higher than Black defendants.<\/p>\n
Studies show that inability to pay bail can affect defendants\u2019 livelihoods and their ability to defend themselves, according to the Vera Institute of Justice<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201c\u200aMost families \u2014 no matter what they did, no matter what they sold \u2014 cannot actually purchase that person\u2019s freedom to give them the fighting chance to go against the state,\u201d Titilay\u1ecd Rasaki, La Defensa\u2019s state policy and legal affairs director.<\/p>\n The L.A. County Superior Court says it\u2019s following the law on bail requirements and that the findings are missing context because observation is limited.<\/p>\n How court-watching works<\/p>\n La Defensa\u2019s Court Watch LA<\/a> program is a community-led effort to document and hold the courts accountable. They train volunteers<\/a> to go in and observe cases.<\/p>\n The volunteers take notes on the charges, the judge\u2019s conduct and the person\u2019s criminal history, if it comes up. That then gets analyzed against publicly available case information and state law. Programs like this exist in several other cities<\/a> around the country.<\/p>\n For the latest report, La Defensa volunteers observed 140 felony and misdemeanor criminal cases, chosen at random, between January to November 2025.<\/p>\n Judicial accountability lead Bryanna Siguenza explained how she decided where to send the volunteers.<\/p>\n \u201c\u200aI choose a department, specifically ones that are pretty busy, have high case loads, and are arraignment and pretrial,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n What watchers saw<\/p>\n Racial disparities in pretrial settings have been researched at local<\/a>, state<\/a> and national<\/a> levels, but La Defensa\u2019s findings are based entirely on human observation, Siguenza said.<\/p>\n The volunteers are trained to listen for important details that come up in proceedings, but they may not always get the full story behind the charges, like a defendant\u2019s criminal history.<\/p>\n L.A. County Superior Court spokesperson Rob Oftring said the report needs more context.<\/p>\n \u201cMany of the report\u2019s findings, for example, do not appear to account for charge severity or criminal history, both of which are legally significant factors in any release decision\u2026\u201d he wrote in a statement.<\/p>\n La Defensa did not include in its report what charges had been filed in the cases observed. However, according to the report, comparable charges still had disproportionate bail outcomes that \u201ccouldn\u2019t be explained by charge severity alone.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"chart](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1784962334_89_thumbnail.jpeg\")
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