{"id":204245,"date":"2026-03-04T18:48:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T18:48:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/204245\/"},"modified":"2026-03-04T18:48:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T18:48:09","slug":"s-f-probation-wants-12m-for-pre-trial-services-that-already-exist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/204245\/","title":{"rendered":"S.F. probation wants $12M for pre-trial services that already exist"},"content":{"rendered":"

San Francisco needs to shave $400 million<\/a> in spending to accommodate a budget deficit, and Mayor Daniel Lurie has instructed departments to start by cutting any services that duplicate one another.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But the Adult Probation Department last week submitted a budget proposal<\/a> requesting $12.7 million for a new program that furnishes the same service a city-contracted nonprofit is already paid to provide.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The city currently gives over $8 million annually to the San Francisco Pretrial Diversion Project<\/a> to work with people awaiting trial outside of jail. The nonprofit has for 50 years connected people suspected of crimes to housing, employment, and medical treatment \u2014 the same services the probation department is now proposing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

CEO David Mauroff said the Pretrial Diversion Project received no notification of the probation department\u2019s proposal, which he described as \u201can exact duplication of our services at a much higher cost.\u201d His nonprofit currently has a staff approaching 100 and a total budget of $12.8 million, part of which is covered by local and state grants.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Probation is asking for $11 million from the city\u2019s general fund and $1.7 million in court funding. According to the proposal, which will be reviewed by the mayor\u2019s office in the coming months, part of the money will go toward providing housing and mental health services to those awaiting trial. It would also fund 50 full-time employees, who are already being recruited. Last Thursday, a director position<\/a> was posted.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve never heard of putting out job descriptions that haven\u2019t even been approved in the budget,\u201d said Sandra Lee Fewer, a former budget chair for San Francisco Board of Supervisors and a current board member of the Pretrial Diversion Program.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Alea Brown-Hoffmeister, the probation department\u2019s director of policy and legislation, declined to comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For years, the partnership between the Pretrial Diversion Program and the sheriff\u2019s department has been endorsed<\/a> by San Francisco politicians, law enforcement leaders, and criminal justice advocates alike. <\/p>\n

In 2023, the nonprofit reported that 93 percent of its clients were not charged with another crime while participating. At other pre-trial pilot programs throughout the state, on average only 65 percent of defendants avoided picking up another charge.<\/p>\n

In 2021, California State Bill 129<\/a> allocated funding for pre-trial programs to be operated by probation departments. But the bill specifically created a carve-out for San Francisco\u2019s court to contract with \u201cthe existing not-for-profit entity,\u201d the Pretrial Diversion Project.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Still, the probation department now wants to make developing and implementing its own pre-trial services a \u201cbudget priority\u201d in the coming years.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Court has advised that SFAPD will assume Pretrial Services effective July 1,\u201d Chief Probation Officer Cristel Tullock wrote in a Feb. 23 letter to the mayor\u2019s budget director and city controller. \u201cSFAPD welcomes the opportunity to integrate Pretrial Services as a new division.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hiring, training, and implementing a new pretrial services division by July 1 is \u201cfiscally irresponsible\u201d and \u201cunrealistic,\u201d Mauroff said. Even if probation got its program running, he added, it would create \u201cconfusion and uncertainty\u201d for attorneys, judges, deputies and defendants.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Unlike those whom the probation department traditionally works with, people in pre-trial services have not yet been convicted of a crime, so the probation department will design a unique program that relies on civilian staff rather than sworn officers, Tullock wrote. <\/p>\n

The chief probation officer described this as \u201can opportunity to address duplicative efforts that currently overburden the courts, resources, and services for individuals involved in multiple systems,\u201d though she did not specify what those were.<\/p>\n

The proposal comes as Lurie is seeking hundreds of millions in cuts, including paring back on contracts<\/a> with community-based organizations. The mayor\u2019s office said yesterday it aimed to cut $100 million in staff across the city<\/a>, equivalent to 500 jobs, among other reductions.<\/p>\n

The mayor\u2019s office did not comment on pre-trial services. <\/p>\n

Probation has struggled to find places for cuts. The $76.8 million and $80 million total funding it has requested for the next two fiscal years exceeds its target. Existing constraints have left the department without resources for \u201cbasic law enforcement operational functions\u201d like background investigations, Tullock wrote in the Feb. 23 letter. <\/p>\n

This is not the first time the department has proposed its own pretrial services. In 2019, the California legislature set aside funding for pilot pretrial service programs<\/a> at 10 probation departments statewide. San Francisco\u2019s probation department was not selected<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe already have a system that works so well,\u201d said David Rizk, a member of the San Francisco Bar Association\u2019s Criminal Justice Task Force, at the time. \u201cThis is a solution in search of a problem.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"San Francisco needs to shave $400 million in spending to accommodate a budget deficit, and Mayor Daniel Lurie…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":204246,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[723,101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-204245","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco","8":"tag-crime","9":"tag-san-francisco","10":"tag-san-francisco-headlines","11":"tag-san-francisco-news","12":"tag-sf","13":"tag-sf-headlines","14":"tag-sf-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204245\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}