On Jan. 28, an Orange County Superior Court judge issued a preliminary injunction that has stopped the Riverside County Superior Court and the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department from jailing individuals who have been arrested for low-level crimes, and have not yet appeared in front of a judge.
Previously, some arrestees for low-level offenses who were unable to make bail—with amounts as high as $20,000—had to remain in jail, for two to five days or even longer, until their arraignment. The arrestees were detained not because they were determined to be a danger to the public, but simply because they did not have the money to pay for their freedom. For now, incarceration of anyone accused of an offense that was on Riverside County’s “bail schedule” (which pre-determined bail amounts for a collection of roughly 60 low-level offenses) is prohibited.
The Superior Court took this action even though Sheriff Chad Bianco has been claiming that the lawsuit was frivolous and groundless. On May 30, 2025, shortly after the suit was filed, Bianco said on the John McGinness Show podcast: “The general public doesn’t know that bail is adjusted all the time. The initial bail just comes from a schedule, and you get held until you see the judge, and then the judge makes decisions of whether to increase the bail, or even lower the bail, or just let you out on your own recognizance. So, the idea that some innocent person is sitting in jail because they can’t pay to bail out is an absolute lie.”
Salil Dudani is a senior attorney with the Civil Rights Corps, and one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs in this lawsuit. Dudani said the case is attempting to address two issues that have existed in Riverside County jails and courts for years now.
“We filed this lawsuit last year (on behalf of) people who had been unconstitutionally jailed in Riverside, and several faith leaders who feel strongly that it makes no sense to jail people just because they can’t make a cash payment, and don’t want their tax dollars spent on that senseless jailing,” Dudani told the Independent. … It’s about two issues: the problem of cash-based jailing, and the problem of unnecessary delays before people are even brought to court in the first place in Riverside (County).
“Cash-based jailing is unconstitutional and unfair, for the obvious reason that whether you can make a cash payment has nothing to do with whether you’re a danger to the community, or whether you’re a flight risk. So, it doesn’t make sense to base jailing decisions on that. And any amount of unnecessary incarceration worsens public safety, because when a person is in jail, their life is destabilized. Even just a couple of days of jailing, let alone more, can cause someone to lose their job, because they don’t show up to their shift, right? Their car can be towed, or they can be evicted if they don’t pay their rent, or they can lose custody of their kids, and so on, and so on, and so on. There’s a lot of very thorough, rigorous research showing that, unsurprisingly, people actually commit more crimes in the future, holding everything else constant, if they’re jailed pretrial, even for short periods.”
Violet Graham is one of the plaintiffs in with the lawsuit. In a recent interview, Graham discussed what happened after she was arrested and could not pay the $20,000 bail required for her to remain free until her arraignment.
“I wanted to talk … about how inhumane, and challenging, and punitive it is in the county jail,” said Graham, who said she had not been arrested previously, and has not been arrested since. “You’ve got people who were just arrested, (and) they’re not convicted. They’re waiting for their day in court. You know, I’ve seen every episode of Law & Order, so I thought I had an idea of what to expect. I did not expect to be shackled, hands and feet, for upwards of 12 hours at a time, with heavy metal chains and a gigantic Master Lock in everyone’s back. I’m aware that there are other ways to do this. They choose to do it in a particularly punitive way.”
“Even just a couple of days of jailing, let alone more, can cause someone to lose their job, because they don’t show up to their shift, right? Their car can be towed, or they can be evicted if they don’t pay their rent, or they can lose custody of their kids.”
Salil Dudani, senior attorney with the Civil Rights Corps,
Graham, who spent about 3 1/2 days in custody, explained that she has a “complicated medical history.”
“I have a spinal cord injury,” she said. “I was on 15 or more medications at that time, and not doing well medically. I did not receive any medical care (while in custody), and every day made that worse, and more risky. So, it’s frustrating to me to know that my experience could have been significantly less traumatic. Ideally, I shouldn’t have had to stay there overnight at all. … Until you reach housing, which could take days, (because) I didn’t reach housing until the last day I was in jail, you don’t get a blanket. You don’t get a sweatshirt; you don’t get socks. You get held in holding rooms. At the worst part, I was in a room with 15 other women, and we were all huddled together on the floor, because it was so cold.”
Graham said she was first placed in the Banning jail, then moved the next day to the Robert Presley Detention Center in Riverside. Although she was transported to a courthouse at one point, she never appeared before a judge. She was finally released finally on the fourth day of her captivity—and she subsequently discovered in court documents that the Riverside judicial system had decided, no later than the day after her arrest, not to file any charges. That delay in releasing her has never been explained by county authorities—and, according to the lawsuit, it is not an unusual occurrence.
Graham said that after she was released, she wanted to understand more about what happened to her, and whether it was normal. She learned, in a sense, that she was fortunate, since a large number of inmates have died in Riverside County’s jail system in recent years—making it, in the words of The New York Times, “one of America’s deadliest jail systems.”
“Particularly, I found the story of Alicia Upton, who died in 2022 in the Robert Presley Detention Center,” Graham said. “Her story has a lot of commonalities with my life story and the struggles that I’ve had, and to think that I just could have been in a different place, that that could have been me, where they weren’t paying attention to me on the camera, and I was harming myself or something like that.”
Among the exhibits presented to the court were signed statements from other plaintiffs, all of whom pointed to serious disruptions that occurred in their jobs, their health, and their family or life responsibilities as a result of their detention.
On Friday, April 24, the case will be back in front of the presiding judge for yet another ruling on an additional demurrer submitted by the Riverside County justice system, in an attempt to have the lawsuit shutdown. The court has already ruled twice against prior defense challenges.
As for whether or not a trial lies ahead, attorney Dudani said: “The constitutional issues are so clear that in other counties in California, it hasn’t even gotten to trial. The judge grants what’s called summary judgment in plaintiff’s favor. (I predict) there’ll be a judgment in plaintiff’s favor saying that, of course, cash-based jailing is unconstitutional—and the case should also address these hearing delays. That’s definitely what the plaintiffs are hoping (for) and expecting.”
