California abolishes money bail. Will it create new problems?

Gov. Jerry Brown (D) signed a landmark bill (which will go into effect in October 2019,) into law in late August, which will make California the first state to abolish cash bail, instead giving judges discretion--which is supposed to focus on the person's risk to public safety--to decide which defendants should stay in jail pending trial, and which are lucky enough to get to go home, released on their own recognizance or under certain "pre-trial release" conditions.  Currently, bail is usually set according to a “bail schedule,” a standardized chart which directs a judge to set a certain bail in relation to the severity of the offense and the defendant’s previous criminal history. 

This is not a new issue, with the idea that cash bail is unfair going back at least 40 years, with Jerry Brown calling it at that time a "tax on poor people," and a recent court decision calling cash bail an unconstitutional denial of due process. The Federal court system's procedures for determining whether a defendant should be released helped to serve as a guide for California's system.  In the federal system defendants are often required to meet certain non-monetary conditions for pretrial release, which may include the surrender of a passport, electronic monitoring, participation in alcohol or drug treatment programs, or agreements to pay high fees if they fail to show up in order as ordered. 

The change in law came about because there were fears throughout the country that a system based on monetary bail is essentially criminalizing poverty, and needlessly filling the jails with defendants who have not yet been convicted of a crime. Under the new law defendants charged with certain low-level crimes would be released within 12 hours after booking without ever seeing a judge; everyone else would undergo a “risk assessment” that considers a multitude of factors. 

But, as always, this system isn't perfect, and late changes to the bill actually caused some previous supports to withdraw their support from the bill.  The greatest concern is that instead of leading to a greater number of people who will be released pending trial, the new system will lead to more people staying in custody, in large part because judges who face reelection may feel political pressure to keep more people in jail in the name of protecting public safety  until the defendant's lawyer can make an argument to the court in favor of release. “Unfortunately, this amended version of [Senate Bill 10] is not the model for pretrial justice and racial equity that the ACLU of California envisioned,” the ACLU of California’s three executive directors in northern and southern California and San Diego said in a joint statement. “We oppose the bill because it seeks to replace the current deeply-flawed system with an overly broad presumption of preventive detention.”
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Not only is there fear the judges may cave to political pressure, there are critics of "risk assessment" protocols in general who claim that what truly amounts to an educated guess about a defendant's potential for future dangerousness may unfairly target racial minorities and the poor as it is common for these assessments to look to a defendant's family situation, income, and employment status.