California Penal Code section 741 (Assembly Bill 2778 (2022)) mandates that
prosecuting agencies remove and redact ethnicity and race-identifying information from
law enforcement reports before making initial charging decisions on many criminal
cases. In 2023, the San Bernardino County District Attorney (SBCDA) evaluated the
requirements outlined in Assembly Bill 2778 and developed its own internal system to
work seamlessly with its case management system. Upon review, SBCDA concluded
that the use of a third-party academic institution, on its face, did not appear to comply
with both federal and state laws related to data security as required by the Government
Code.
To that end, SBCDA began testing different methods of meeting the requirements of the
new law while maintaining federal- and state-mandated confidentiality. SBCDA
determined Artificial Intelligence (AI) to be the tool of choice for this purpose. Testing of
different forms of AI commenced at the end of 2023, and a prototype for operations was
developed. However, OpenAI was not available within the Microsoft Azure Government
Community Cloud (GCC) environment at the time.
In April 2024, Microsoft made Azure OpenAI available within the GCC, and
development commenced to meet the new law. Unfortunately, Microsoft has been slow
to develop the same training and tools that are available in other Azure OpenAI
environments for the Azure GCC, the environment in which SBCDA hosts its system.
At the end of 2024, the initial development of the OpenAI solution was placed into
SBCDA’s case management system within Azure GCC. Production commenced with
out-of-custody cases submitted by one law enforcement agency on January 1, 2025,
with one SBCDA criminal division focusing on testing, enhancements, and perfection of
processes before wider deployment across the county. Staged development and rollout
ensure necessary current criminal operations are not negatively affected throughout the
process. Updates will be made available when completed.
Consistent with Penal Code section 741, subdivision (c), the following types of cases are currently excluded from Race-Blind Charging (all statutory references are to the Penal Code unless otherwise noted):
- Homicide. (§§ 187, 192, 191.5.)
- Hate Crime. (§§ 422.6, 422.55, 422.6, 11411, 11413.)
- Cases in which physical confrontation(s) was/were captured on video.
- Domestic Violence. (§§ 273.5, 243(e)(1), 273a, 273.6.)
- Sex crime. (§§ 261, 261.5, 243.4, 288.3, 286, 287, 288, 288a, 289, 289.6, 290, 647(a), 647(b)(1)-(4),647(d), 647(i), 647(j)(1)-(4), 647(k), 647(l) 647.6, 311, 311.1, 311.2, 311.11, 288.3, 236.1, 266 (all variants), 267, 269.)
- Gang crime
- Cases in which a child forensic interview was completed for use in sexual assault, physical abuse, or neglect cases.
- Cases in which interviews of multiple victims were completed for sexual assault, physical abuse, or neglect cases.
- Cases of sexual assault, physical abuse, or neglect involving multiple defendants.
- Financial crimes. (§§ 186.10, 327, 470, 484e to 484j, 518-527, 548-550, 532f, Corp. Code, §§ 25400-25540, Rev. & Tax Code, § 19705, Wel. & Inst. Code, § 10980.). In addition, the following are found to fit within the definition of financial crimes: Bribery (§§ 67-68.), Counterfeiting (§§ 470, 475.), and Loan Sharking. (§ 1916.1.).
- Public integrity crimes.
- SBCDA Bureau of Investigation-initiated cases.
- Cases initiated by way of grand-jury indictment or investigation.
In addition to the above statutorily permitted exceptions, SBCDA authorizes the exemption of the following charges from Race-Blind Charging: Penal Code section 530.5 (Identity Theft), and Penal Code section 502 (Computer/Internet Fraud).