Mayor Daniel Lurie has been celebrating San Francisco's falling crime rate. SF Pretrial is one of the core reasons the crime rate is falling. But now the city is quietly moving to replace this public safety pillar with even more money for the San Francisco Adult Probation Department, an armed law enforcement agency. This makes no sense.
* Together, we can stop this.
For 50 years, the San Francisco Pretrial Diversion Project (SF Pretrial) — an independent community-based nonprofit — has handled the city's pretrial services. Supervising people released from jail before trial. Making sure they show up for court. Connecting them with housing, treatment, and stability.
On July 1, 2026, the city plans to dissolve SF Pretrial and transfer all of that work to the San Francisco Adult Probation Department — an armed law enforcement agency under the Superior Court. Adult Probation is engineered to monitor and arrest individuals convicted of a crime, not support people who are presumed innocent until proven guilty.
Every comparison on this page is between those two: the current SF Pretrial program (50-year community-based nonprofit) and the proposed replacement (a sworn probation department without pretrial experience).
San Francisco Sheriff Paul Miyamoto put his full-throated support on the record. So has the country's foremost civil-liberties organization. So have the leading pretrial research and policy organizations in the United States. So has the local legal community closest to this work. Eight voices. One conclusion.
In a letter to city officials, the SF Sheriff publicly refuted the Superior Court's attempt to undermine SF Pretrial's data — noting the court's analysis "failed to use national standards." Reported by The SF Standard.
Read the SF Standard story →Transparency requires more than the publication of data. It requires a shared understanding of what is being measured, how it is being measured, and whether the metrics being compared are, in fact, measuring the same outcomes.
The country's foremost civil-liberties organization on the record in defense of SF Pretrial's foundational contract.
Read the letterA national leader in criminal-justice research and policy writes the Board of Supervisors to preserve SF Pretrial.
Read the letterThe 5,600-member legal community of San Francisco — the lawyers closest to this work — urges Mayor Lurie to preserve SF Pretrial.
Read the letterThe national authority on pretrial policy research backs SF Pretrial's model as a national standard worth preserving.
Read the letterCalifornia's civil-liberties organization sends public-safety policy recommendations to the Mayor's Office.
Read the letterCalifornia's statewide coalition for community-based public safety stands with SF Pretrial.
Read the letterThe accreditation body for pretrial-services programs nationally — the body that accredited SF Pretrial itself — on the record.
Read the letterThe agency that has made San Franciscans safer — and at a fraction of the price — is the one the city is about to dissolve.
"[SF Pretrial is] the greatest thing no one's ever really heard of." — Toney Chaplin, Former Assistant Chief, SFPD (30 years)
Not opinions. Not anecdotes. Audited outcomes by multiple sources — the kind decision-makers should have been seeing for years, and somehow haven't.
The SF Sheriff publicly stands behind these numbers — and just publicly refuted the Superior Court's attempt to undermine them, in a June 12 letter to city officials. The court's analysis "failed to use national standards." The 93%/96% figures follow the field's accepted methodology.
The data on SF Pretrial is exceptional and acclaimed.
The decision to dissolve it is not about outcomes.
The city pays SF Pretrial $7.5M for pretrial services. SF Pretrial more than doubles that — into $15.5M of total programming, leveraged with grants and Medi-Cal revenue. Comparable probation services and supervision for the same population would cost the city ~$58M when scaled up. None of the leverage transfers.
A program that more than doubles every city dollar — and produces better safety outcomes — is the kind of result governments are supposed to be looking for, not throwing away.
The Probation Alternative:
The city is being asked to pay more, to hire fewer people, to deliver worse safety outcomes, on the same population SF Pretrial is already serving better than any probation department in California. After a year to get ready, Probation is already failing and they aren't prepared for July 1st — will the city make this bad decision anyway?
SF Pretrial isn't just exceptional in San Francisco — it's a consistently-studied pretrial model across the country, a Bay Area public safety innovation that other counties are now reaching out to adopt. Other cities are trying to catch up. The city that built it is about to dismantle it.
Most U.S. jurisdictions run pretrial services inside a law enforcement or government agency. SF Pretrial is one of a small handful of independent, community-based programs operating at this scale and breadth — alongside peers like NYC's Criminal Justice Agency, JusticePoint, Maine Pretrial Services, and Berks Connections in Pennsylvania. The model itself is the innovation. To enhance public safety, the pretrial field is moving in the direction of SF Pretrial.
SF Pretrial built the case-management platform the field needs — client-centric, outcomes-first, wraparound and supportive services-integrated. OpenJustice quantifies and standardizes dimensions of client engagement and intervention that other systems leave unmeasured, producing a more nuanced framework for program evaluation and data transparency. Counties across California and other states are reaching out to learn more.
Nationally, county and local governments are using models like SF Pretrial to modify their probation and government-administered models toward community-based, independent support and supervision. SF Pretrial has been operating it for 50 years — long enough to have answered questions the field is only beginning to ask, and long enough to have trained professionals in jurisdictions across the U.S.
Not "an organization." Concrete things. Specific things. Things that took fifty years to build.
AB 102 carves San Francisco out by name. AB 102 was designed to build pretrial infrastructure in counties that didn't have it. It directed courts to contract with county probation departments to stand up new programs. San Francisco already had one — a nationally accredited, 50-year program exceeding every standard the law was written to establish. The Judicial Council carved San Francisco out by name, explicitly allowing the Superior Court to maintain a program run by a local nonprofit instead. The court is now using that same law to dismantle the program that made the carve-out necessary.
"The legislation made exceptions to the requirement to contract with county agencies for the Superior Courts of San Francisco and Santa Clara Counties. These jurisdictions were allowed to maintain pretrial programs that were administered by local nonprofit entities and already in place at the time the legislation was enacted."
— Report to the Legislature: Pretrial Services Program Year 4, 2026. Judicial Council of California, April 2026. Footnote 7, p. 8. courts.ca.gov/7466.htm
San Francisco built its own pretrial system. The court is invoking a law written for counties that never had one.
A decision this consequential — affecting public safety, the city's budget, and a 50-year SF institution — was made without anyone responsible for the work in the room.
The decision was reiterated as final before any formal data request was ever made of SF Pretrial and without the courtesy of a response to the SF Board.
The proposal to dissolve SF Pretrial and transfer its work to Adult Probation was reached through informal channels — phone calls, side meetings — among the Superior Court, Adult Probation, and the Mayor's Office.
SF Pretrial — the organization being dissolved, providing the service for 50 years — was not invited into substantive discussions.
No public comment period preceded the decision.
The 1,800 presumed-innocent people whose cases are being transferred were not consulted.
The 105 SF Pretrial staff were not consulted. The 150+ community partner organizations in SF Pretrial's network were not consulted.
When pressed, the court published flawed metrics instead of answering SF Pretrial's outstanding requests. The SF Sheriff publicly called it out in a June 12 letter: the court's analysis "failed to use national standards" and produced different — and inaccurate — conclusions about SF Pretrial's performance.
The data on SF Pretrial is unchallenged. The legal basis for the transfer doesn't apply. And the process that produced this decision could not survive five minutes of public scrutiny.
It's up to the Board of Supervisors. It's their call to make. The June 12 budget committee heard the case — and the Sheriff publicly refuted the court's attempt to undermine SF Pretrial. The full Board vote is still ahead. Every supervisor's vote is a choice they'll be accountable for. Things you can do right now.
The Mayor submits his FY26 budget to the Board.
The committee heard the case June 12; the full Board still has to vote on the SF Pretrial contract and the Probation request. Reach Supervisors. Send letters. Keep the pressure on.
If nothing changes by then: SF Pretrial dissolves, 1,800 cases transfer to Adult Probation, the walk-in center closes, the existing pretrial system collapses.
Note: Even after the Board votes, the Mayor can put anything back into the final budget. The Mayor is the last lever and has the final say.
This is preservable. The Mayor and City have the authority. The data is unchallenged. The clock is the only enemy.
The budget committee heard the case on June 12. The Sheriff publicly refuted the court's attempt to undermine SF Pretrial's data. The full Board still has to decide. Six ways to keep the pressure on.
The Mayor has final say — he can remove the Adult Probation request at any time. Hold him to his word: shrink the government and cut costs. Funding Adult Probation is the exact opposite. Three of the Mayor's senior staff are named in the transition memo. Pre-drafted — open and send.
Open pre-written emailEleven supervisors decide. The June 12 budget hearing is the next time it lands on the record — reach them before they sit down. We've drafted the email — safety case, cost case, legal carve-out. You add your name and send.
Open pre-written emailSF Pretrial has deep respect for the Judges we work with day in and day out. Begrudgingly and guided by advice from our partners, we have decided it is imperative to inform judicial leadership about the impact of their decision.
Open pre-written emailMost San Franciscans have never heard of SF Pretrial. Most journalists haven't either. Help spread the case for preserving it — the data, the leverage, the legal carve-out.
Share nowHearings, vote dates, what to send, where to show up. The campaign in your inbox — only when it matters.
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Donate hereOn June 12, the SF Sheriff publicly refuted the court's attempt to undermine SF Pretrial — in a letter to city officials, reported by The SF Standard. The court's data attack is now on the record as flawed. The "quiet" part of this is over.
Transparency requires more than the publication of data. It requires a shared understanding of what is being measured, how it is being measured, and whether the metrics being compared are, in fact, measuring the same outcomes.
— Sheriff Paul Miyamoto, in a June 12 letter to city officials, reported by The SF Standard"We tried to honor 50 years of partnership. In contrast, the Superior Court is publicly impugning our agency to validate their decision that is being robustly challenged."
— David Mauroff, CEO, SF Pretrial Diversion Project — quoted in The SF Standard · June 12, 2026Documents, data, and named voices. While Trump dismantles federal criminal-justice reform, the bluest city in the bluest state is quietly dissolving one of the country's most uniquely effective community-based pretrial programs. The blue-state firewall is failing — on a tight clock. Reporters welcome.
Hearings, vote dates, what to send, where to show up. The campaign in your inbox — only when it matters.
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