When individuals are arrested for illegal activity, why are they back in the City so quickly?

When individuals are arrested for illegal activity, why are they back in the City so quickly?

January 7, 2025

The majority of violations that homeless people are arrested for are misdemeanors. These types of crimes can result in a physical arrest where a person is taken into custody and booked into the county jail, or they can be issued a Notice to Appear citation. 

The Sonoma County Jail was experiencing a critical staffing shortage over the past 18 months while simultaneously the jail was nearly at capacity. The situation got to a critical point where Sonoma County had to enter into an agreement with Solano County to house some of Sonoma County’s prisoners. 

To reduce and manage the jail population, local police agencies had to get advance clearance from a supervisor at the jail to be allowed to book misdemeanor offenders into the jail. The result was that often, clearance to book someone into jail was denied, resulting in people being issued a citation in the field and released. 

Even when people are booked into jail on a misdemeanor crime, they often are held only for a few hours to allow for processing and then they are released with a Notice to Appear (for a future court hearing). Individuals who are booked for misdemeanors are not held awaiting trial. Once they are released, they tend to return to the area they are familiar with and sometimes they are back in less than 24 hours. Additionally, even if convicted of a misdemeanor crime, the conviction usually results in little to no jail time with the person being placed on some form of probation, which results in their return to the community.