Artificial intelligence could be on the cusp of getting a bigger foothold in San Diego County’s criminal justice system.
The county wants to build an AI model to help write hundreds of reports every month for county probation officers, handing over to AI a role in the creation of a key document courts rely upon when they sentence defendants.
If launched, the technology would use the disparate documents and information of a person’s criminal history — police reports, court transcripts, case notes and more — and write summaries of their contents for inclusion in probation officers’ reports, according to a draft contract for the system the county released on Sept. 1.
During the sentencing phase of a criminal case, probation officers use their reports to make recommendations to the court. Those recommendations can include how long and to what extent a person should be incarcerated or put on community supervision.
For county officials, using AI to write these reports is meant to bring better efficiency to a probation department increasingly overloaded with work.
“Automating portions of report‑writing is intended to support officers by reducing administrative burden and improving efficiency,” said Chuck Westerheide, a spokesperson for the county’s public safety agencies.
“As efficiency is gained, staff can focus on meaningful client engagement, helping ensure resources are directed toward the department’s core service priorities,” Westerheide said.
For now, it’s not yet known how much the county is planning to spend on this AI model.
A contract for building it has been put out to bid. Companies have until Oct. 16 to submit their proposals, which would include a budget.
On Sept. 8, the county gave a presentation on the contract to interested companies. Ten software and AI companies attended the presentation, some of whom brand themselves as specializing in programming AI models for probation departments.
The draft contract does come with important caveats for what human control over the model is supposed to look like.
An eventual model will not make suggestions for what probation officers should recommend to the court about a person’s sentencing, Westerheide said.
“All case reviews and decisions will continue to be made by probation officers using their professional expertise, established policies and a thorough individualized review of each client’s circumstances,” Westerheide said.
The model won’t be used for juvenile defendants either, he added. Though the contract does note the model may have access to the juvenile records of adult defendants.
Use of the AI also won’t be mandatory, Westerheide said.
Every year, the contract must analyze the model for “bias and fairness assessments,” and it comes with data protections, too.
Data collected by the model can only be used for county business and cannot be shared, according to the draft contract. But it does leave the door open for a company, including subcontractors, to train their AI models with county data, though they must get written approval from the county first.
Even with those protections, using an AI model to produce a statement of fact which could impact a person’s rights or freedom is one of the riskier uses of the technology in criminal justice, said Jonathan Wroblewski, a Harvard law lecturer and former U.S. Department of Justice policy official.
Wroblewski has been working with the Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan think tank, to release a framework for criminal justice agencies to follow when deciding how to use AI.
Beyond weighing the risks, agencies need to do some hard thinking about how AI will actually solve their problems, and if they have a team and resources in place to adequately monitor the models they’re using, Wroblewski said.
“This is the analysis that I would certainly recommend that they go through before they actually decide to deploy this,” Wroblewski said.
“That statement of facts is going to help decide what a person’s sentence is going to be, and that’s something that’s very important,” he added. “It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it. It just means we should be careful, and the more careful means there should be more questions on the engineering and how it’s done.”
The contracting and bidding process is outside the power of the Board of Supervisors, who control county finances and policy.
But on first blush, supervisors’ reactions to the proposed contract have ranged from supportive to calls for oversight.
“When a report can influence decisions about someone’s liberty, efficiency cannot come at the expense of accuracy, equity or due process,” said Supervisor Monica Montgomery Steppe, a Democrat.
“Before moving forward, we need confidence that this technology has been rigorously tested for errors and bias, with meaningful human oversight and accountability,” Montgomery Steppe said.
Supervisor Paloma Aguirre, a Democrat, said she’ll be monitoring the contract going forward.
“We’re seeing some very concerning issues with AI right now, and I have real concerns about using it in a place where a report can decide whether someone goes home or goes to jail,” Aguirre said.
Supervisor Joel Anderson, a Republican, said he trusts county staff and the probation department to build an AI model that avoids errors, bias and other issues.
Supervisors Jim Desmond and Terra Lawson-Remer did not return a request for comment.
Chief Probation Officer Tamika Nelson declined a request for comment.
‘Cautiously optimistic’
A recent outside review of the probation department found issues with staff workloads, which county officials are now using to justify a new reliance on AI.
Authored in May 2025, the review found that the department was struggling to retain staff and exceeding its overtime budget by 282%.
Staff who work on pre-sentencing reports, which would get partially automated by a new AI model, explicitly named writing the reports as a burdensome part of their workload.
“Employees interviewed believe investigative reports are long, onerous and time consuming,” the review, authored by Veterans United Solutions, said.
“There is a desire to streamline investigative reports,” it added.
From mid-2024 to mid-2025, the probation department completed about 7,800 pre-sentencing reports, according to the department’s most recent annual report.
Officers are expected to write about three reports a week, but the nature of the reports can range from defendants convicted of a DUI to a complex murder case involving thousands of court and police documents, said Jennifer Fox, president of the San Diego County Probation Officers Association.
Recent changes to state law have fueled caseloads.
Under a 2011 law, those convicted of certain low-level felonies have to be incarcerated in local county jails instead of state prisons. Another 2020 law capped probation terms at two years, leading probation officers to do more risk assessment and case plans for when a person is released.
Then there’s Proposition 36, which made some misdemeanor theft and drug charges felonies carrying stiffer penalties.
All told, these laws have probation officers contending with more defendants and spending more of their time tracking down and reading what can be extensive criminal histories.
“The cases are getting more complicated,” Fox said. “The expectations are getting higher, but no real relief is being provided.”
But Fox still isn’t all in on AI, saying she’s “cautiously optimistic” about what the technology can achieve for officers.
“This is all so new,” she said. “But I would imagine that we’re going to have oversight and policies attached with this new technology.”
Dan Greene, a San Diego defense attorney at Sevens Legal, said he’s not only worried about the AI model making outright errors, but losing the nuance of complicated legal records.
Police and court records can contain myriad allegations against a person which aren’t necessarily facts, he said. If given outsized importance in a report, that could leave a judge to read an AI-generated report which is misleading or biased.
“AI can make these hidden judgment calls,” Greene said. “Who’s actually reaching that conclusion? That is my concern. Is it the probation officer or is it the AI?”
According to procurement records, the county expects to ink a contract sometime next year. The county plans to pay a monthly subscription fee to use the AI model and will be able to extend the initial contract through 2032.