California Penal Code

§ 741

PEN § 741 Effective Jan 1, 2023Title 2 · Part 2

Statute text

(a)Beginning January 1, 2024, the Department of Justice shall develop, issue, and publish “Race-Blind Charging” guidelines for a process whereby all prosecution agencies, for purposes of this section defined as agencies, or branches of agencies, that prosecute criminal violations of the law as felonies or misdemeanors, shall implement a process by which an initial review of a case for potential charging is performed based on information, including police reports and criminal histories from the Department of Justice, from which direct means of identifying the race of the suspect, victim, or witness have been removed or redacted.

(b)Following the department’s guidelines, prosecution agencies shall independently develop and execute versions of this redaction and review process with the following general criteria:

(1)Beginning January 1, 2025, cases received from law enforcement agencies and suspect criminal history documentation shall be redacted, by the receiving prosecution agency, in order to be used for a race-blind initial charging evaluation, which shall precede the ordinary charging evaluation. This redaction may occur in a separate version of the documents and may be done mechanically, by hand performed by personnel not associated with the charging of the case, or by automation with the use of computer programming, so long as the method used reasonably ensures correct redaction. The redaction may be applied to the entire report or to only the “narrative” portion of the report so long as the portion submitted for initial review is sufficient to perform that review and the unredacted portions are not part of the initial charging evaluation.

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Legislative history

Added by Stats. 2022, Ch. 806, Sec. 2. (AB 2778) Effective January 1, 2023.