{"id":473026,"date":"2026-09-23T12:06:21","date_gmt":"2026-09-23T12:06:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/473026\/"},"modified":"2026-09-23T12:06:21","modified_gmt":"2026-09-23T12:06:21","slug":"san-franciscos-pretrial-program-is-closing-its-replacement-isnt-ready","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/473026\/","title":{"rendered":"San Francisco’s pretrial program is closing. Its replacement isn\u2019t ready."},"content":{"rendered":"

People accused of a crime walk a thin line between freedom and rearrest while awaiting trial. Now, as more people in San Francisco are being released<\/a> pretrial because of a recent state Supreme Court decision, the organization that for decades helped defendants navigate that precipice has for the most part stopped taking new clients. <\/p>\n

No one is ready to take its place.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The San Francisco Pretrial Diversion Project, a pioneering 50-year-old nonprofit that has helped thousands of pretrial defendants stay out of jail, started winding down this summer after the city and courts<\/a> decided to cut the organization\u2019s annual contract by the end of the fiscal year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The city had planned for SF Pretrial to hand over services to a new division of the court\u2019s Adult Probation Department, under a $12.7 million yearly contract<\/a>, next year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But faced with hemorrhaging staff, reduced private funding and an increasing workload, SF Pretrial\u2019s leaders stopped<\/a> taking new clients for its two main programs in early August, even though the Adult Probation Department wasn\u2019t ready to take over.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs staff leave and our end date approaches, we have gradually reduced the number of new people entering our programs while continuing to work with those already enrolled,\u201d wrote Matt Miller, interim CEO of SF Pretrial. \u201cIf we cannot see someone through their time with us, it is better to be honest about that before we begin than to take someone on and leave them without the support they were promised.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

As of Sept. 30, the organization will no longer take any new referrals, and will close entirely on Nov. 13. The Adult Probation Department, meanwhile, says it won\u2019t be ready to pick up pretrial services until January 2027.<\/p>\n

Since 1976, defendants could be enrolled in SF Pretrial\u2019s Assertive Case Management by a judge, if that judge decided that they were eligible for release while awaiting trial but needed support to ensure they\u2019d keep coming to court. A case manager would pick the person up, assess them and develop a detailed plan for their continued rehabilitation.<\/p>\n

The In-Custody Referral program, meanwhile, was recommended for people judges were more hesitant to release. The program connected case managers with people still in jail awaiting trial. SF Pretrial\u2019s case managers would visit the clients in jail, evaluate them there, develop a plan based on their individual cases and present them to the judge as a condition for the person\u2019s release.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In both programs, case managers were responsible for supervising their client \u2014 following up with them, keeping them on time for court hearings, informing judges if their clients weren\u2019t complying with required plans, helping them enroll in electronic monitoring programs and supporting them with critical services to keep them out of trouble.<\/p>\n

Those programs served 1,753 people in just the first quarter of 2026.<\/a><\/p>\n

While SF Pretrial had all kinds of clients, many referred to it have historically been affected by mental illnesses, cognitive problems or substance abuse disorders, and were often without housing or healthcare. These people, said former presiding justice of the city\u2019s court of appeal Anthony Kline, are \u201cthe most rehabilitatable cohort in the criminal justice system in this county.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

SF Pretrial not only helped manage pretrial individuals\u2019 cases \u2014 it also made sure that every case manager was responsible for finding them places to stay, healthcare, and the mental health or addiction treatment needed to stabilize them.<\/p>\n

Closure and replacement dates<\/p>\n

Early August<\/p>\n

SF Pretrial stopped taking new clients for Assertive Case Management and In-Custody Referral.<\/p>\n

September 30<\/p>\n

SF Pretrial will no longer take new clients for any programs.<\/p>\n

November 13<\/p>\n

SF Pretrial will close completely.<\/p>\n

January 2027<\/p>\n

The Adult Probation Department expects to be ready to pick up pretrial services.<\/p>\n

Now, in the gap left by SF Pretrial\u2019s closing, judges are releasing pretrial defendants without access to individual services, or else hoping defense attorneys will take on the extra work.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re gonna see a lot of people on the street who are not being monitored, not being supported, whose addiction is being ignored, whose homelessness is not being taken into account,\u201d said Kline, who has vocally opposed<\/a> SF Pretrial\u2019s closure.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mission Local spoke with more than a dozen defense attorneys who expressed concern about the gap in services. Aleem Raja, co-manager of the public defender\u2019s felony unit, said it\u2019s \u201ca mistake\u201d to think that the Adult Probation Department will be able to fill SF Pretrial\u2019s role in this interim period. \u201cThere is no transition right now,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u2018When you go down there by yourself, it\u2019s harder\u2019<\/p>\n

The first time Freddie Copeland heard about SF Pretrial, he remembered thinking, \u201cWho the hell is that?\u201d<\/p>\n

Copeland, a 65-year-old who has lived most of his life in San Francisco, was arrested in February 2025. He was released from jail after almost a week and placed in SF Pretrial\u2019s Assertive Case Management program.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Over the last year and a half, SF Pretrial got Copeland housed and connected with health services. The staff, he said, also helped him arrive to court hearings on time to keep him from being rearrested, and made sure he understood the \u201clegalese\u201d behind his case.<\/p>\n

Copeland said he\u2019s worked with a number of other organizations, but that SF Pretrial is the first place that helped him navigate the many pieces of a complicated system. \u201cSF Pretrial has done way more than everybody else,\u201d he said. \u201cEverywhere else you\u2019re just a number.\u201d At SF Pretrial, Copeland said he actually trusted his caseworker.<\/p>\n

The organization, said private defense attorney Jennie Stepanian, gained the trust of clients because it was an independent third-party system, not part of law enforcement or the courts. \u201cThe beautiful part about SF Pretrial,\u201d she said,\u201d is that they would come into our cases like a mythical creature and pick up all the pieces of what to do with each individual person.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stepanian said that she has sent a number of vulnerable defendants to SF Pretrial: people with cognitive disabilities, who are unhoused, or who suffer from PTSD. SF Pretrial has always prided itself on hiring formerly homeless or incarcerated people, according to its staff, and Stepanian said her clients got services from people they felt safe with to talk honestly about their challenges.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Who will cover the gap?\u00a0<\/p>\n

As the number of people being released from jail rises, there are fewer resources to keep them on track until the adult probation department is ready. As ACLU Norcal attorney Avram Frey said, \u201cThere\u2019s no plan now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Superior judge Matthew Kahn explained to one defense attorney last month that currently, in the gap between SF Pretrial\u2019s programs and whenever Adult Probation\u2019s new program is ready, the court is \u201crecommending folks to CASC.\u201d<\/p>\n

CASC, the Community Assessment and Services Cente, is an arm<\/a> of San Francisco\u2019s probation department. The center has historically been a place for individuals convicted of nonviolent crimes to get support enrolling in classes like anger management, finding housing or other services. Many attorneys told Mission Local that CASC provides good services \u2014 but, they said, it isn\u2019t a full replacement for SF Pretrial.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"StreetThe Community Assessment and Services Center in SoMa. Photo by Frankie Solinsky Duryea.<\/p>\n

While SF Pretrial was open 9 to 5 every weekday and would send caseworkers to pick up defendants from the jails upon release, CASC only has pretrial case workers available for a couple hours a day. And in that window, defendants must get to SoMa on their own and find CASC\u2019s office, directly next to the Adult Probation Department.<\/p>\n

While CASC can connect clients with behavioral classes, housing options and drug treatment plans, many pretrial defendants are simply ordered to go to the office and get a signed piece of paper confirming that they checked in. Unlike S.F. Pretrial, CASC does not have case managers who follow up with pretrial clients, supervising their criminal cases and delivering individualized reports to the court.<\/p>\n

On Aug. 21, when visiting superior court judge Gloria Rhynes (who was in the process of ordering supervision conditions for a defendant in her court) learned that SF Pretrial was no longer taking referrals, she had only two words: \u201cOh boy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two jobs in one<\/p>\n

In the absence of SF Pretrial\u2019s main programs, many defense attorneys are doing the work of\u00a0 case managers themselves \u2014 or trying to find and fund social workers in an already overburdened<\/a> court system.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m having to coordinate getting [my clients] social workers,\u201d said private defense attorney Rose Mishaan.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t have a psychology degree,\u201d Mishaan said. \u201cAnd I feel like I\u2019m being forced into the position of having to act like a case manager instead of a lawyer, which is really challenging.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Anjuli Webb, a deputy public defender, said that she has seen many attorneys taking on the additional brunt of social work.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s additional hours to our workload,\u201d she said, and detracts from the time she can spend preparing for her clients\u2019 trials.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Frey, the ACLU attorney, said that with the lapse in services, the city will likely see \u201cincreased detention, either for behavioral issues or failure to appear,\u201d and more problems on the streets that might lead to re-arrests.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Several attorneys shared with Mission Local that since the closing of S.F. Pretrial programs, they have already seen more clients fail to appear \u2014 and wind up with warrants for their rearrest as a result.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cEven if you thought Pretrial stinks, you would have wanted to avoid this,\u201d Frey said.<\/p>\n

Attorneys expressed hope that the Adult Probation Department will be successful when it starts up in January, and pointed to the pretrial division\u2019s new director, Melanie Kushnir-Pappalardo<\/a>, who ran the city\u2019s collaborative courts for years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But no substantive alternative is ready for the people being released today.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"People accused of a crime walk a thin line between freedom and rearrest while awaiting trial. Now, as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":473027,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[3622,2781,1493,14367,2093,5466,17262,101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-473026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-court","tag-drugs","tag-homelessness","tag-jail","tag-mental-health","tag-nonprofits","tag-public-defender","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473026","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=473026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473026\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/473027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=473026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=473026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=473026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}