Bay Area Sentencing Trends Every Defender Should Know

The San Francisco Bay Area is home to nine counties, nine district attorney's offices, nine superior courts, and nine fundamentally different approaches to criminal sentencing. A person charged with felony drug possession in San Francisco faces a dramatically different set of likely outcomes than someone facing the identical charge forty miles east in Contra Costa County. This is not anecdotal. It is measurable, quantifiable, and — for defense attorneys who know how to use the data — strategically actionable. This article breaks down the sentencing landscape across the Bay Area and shows you how to turn county-level variation into a practical advantage for your clients.

The Sentencing Landscape: Nine Counties, Nine Realities

The nine Bay Area counties — Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, and Sonoma — span a population of roughly 7.7 million people. They encompass some of the most progressive jurisdictions in the nation alongside counties that hew closer to California's historically tough-on-crime median. For defense attorneys, this geographic proximity paired with ideological distance creates both challenges and opportunities.

Consider a straightforward scenario. Your client is charged with PC 459 — second-degree commercial burglary — with one prior strike. In San Francisco, the DA's office under the current administration is likely to offer a plea to a wobbler reduced to a misdemeanor with probation and restitution. In Contra Costa, the same defendant with the same record faces a likely offer of 32 months in state prison. In Santa Clara, the outcome falls somewhere in between, typically county jail time with mandatory supervision. Three counties, three entirely different life trajectories for your client.

This variation is not random. It reflects deep structural differences: the political orientation of elected DAs, the composition and temperament of the bench, the strength and resources of the public defense bar, local jail capacity constraints, diversion program availability, and community attitudes toward incarceration. Understanding these structural drivers is the first step toward using sentencing data strategically.

Conviction Rates by County: The Numbers Behind the Outcomes

Conviction rates are the broadest measure of how a county's criminal justice system operates. They reflect not just jury verdicts but the cumulative effect of DA filing decisions, plea bargaining practices, judicial gatekeeping, diversion program usage, and defense advocacy. A low conviction rate does not necessarily mean a county is "soft on crime" — it often means the DA's office is more selective about what it files, the bench is more willing to grant defense motions, and diversion programs are diverting cases that would otherwise result in convictions.

Several patterns emerge. San Francisco's 62% felony conviction rate is the lowest in the region — and one of the lowest among major California counties. This reflects both the DA's office filing philosophy (declining cases that lack strong evidence or involve minor conduct) and an 18% diversion usage rate that routes drug, mental health, and low-level property cases out of the traditional conviction pipeline. Alameda's 68% rate reflects a similarly progressive ecosystem, driven in part by one of the best-resourced public defender offices in the state.

At the other end, Solano County's 84% felony conviction rate tells a different story. With limited diversion programs (only 5% of cases diverted), a historically conservative bench, and a DA's office known for aggressive filing practices, defendants in Solano face significantly steeper odds. The gap between Solano's 84% and San Francisco's 62% represents a 22-percentage-point difference in the probability of conviction for equivalent conduct — a disparity that should trouble anyone who believes in equal justice under law.

For practitioners, these numbers have immediate tactical implications. If your client's case has a plausible venue argument — perhaps the alleged conduct spanned multiple counties, or there is a legitimate basis for a change of venue motion — the conviction rate differential provides concrete data to support your strategic calculations. Even where venue is fixed, understanding your county's baseline conviction rate helps you calibrate client expectations and plea negotiation strategy.

Plea vs. Trial Rates: What the 5% Reveals

Across all nine Bay Area counties, between 93% and 97% of criminal cases resolve through guilty pleas or no-contest pleas. This is consistent with national patterns — the criminal justice system as it currently operates is fundamentally a plea-bargaining system, not a trial system. But the variation within that narrow band is more meaningful than it might appear.

San Francisco and Alameda have the highest felony trial rates in the Bay Area at approximately 6.2% and 5.8% respectively. Solano and Contra Costa have the lowest at 3.1% and 3.4%. The gap — roughly 3 percentage points — translates to meaningful differences in how the defense bar operates and how the prosecution calculates risk.

In counties with higher trial rates, prosecutors must build their cases anticipating that the defense will actually go to trial on a meaningful percentage of cases. This discipline has upstream effects on the entire system: stronger case screening at the filing stage, more realistic plea offers, greater willingness to negotiate, and more judicial pressure on both sides to resolve cases fairly. When DAs know that 6% of cases will go to trial, they prepare differently than when they know the number is 3%.

For individual defenders, the trial rate in your county is a proxy for the "trial tax" — the penalty defendants face for exercising their Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial. In counties with lower trial rates, the trial tax tends to be steeper because going to trial is treated as anomalous rather than as the exercise of a constitutional right. In counties with higher trial rates, the trial tax is moderated because trials are normalized. The practical implication: if you practice in a low-trial-rate county, you need to be especially strategic about trial selection, because the consequences of losing at trial are disproportionately severe.

There is a recursive quality to this dynamic. Counties where defenders take more cases to trial develop stronger trial lawyers, which produces more acquittals, which makes prosecutors more cautious in their charging and plea practices, which creates better outcomes for all defendants — including those who plead. Conversely, counties where the defense bar rarely goes to trial produce weaker trial skills, fewer acquittals, more aggressive prosecution, and worse plea offers. The culture of the defense bar shapes outcomes for every client, not just those who go to trial.

Sentence Type Distribution: Prison, Jail, Probation, and Everything Between

Once a defendant is convicted, the sentence type — state prison, county jail, formal probation, split sentence (jail plus mandatory supervision), or straight probation — varies enormously by county. This is where the rubber meets the road for your clients. A conviction with probation means they go home. A conviction with state prison means years away from their families, their jobs, and their communities.

The state prison column tells the most important story. San Francisco's 18% prison rate stands in stark contrast to Contra Costa's 41%. For a defendant convicted of the same offense with the same criminal history, the probability of going to state prison is more than double in Contra Costa compared to San Francisco. Conversely, San Francisco's 38% probation-only rate dwarfs Solano's 20%.

AB 109 realignment, which shifted responsibility for lower-level felons from state prison to county jail, created the "split sentence" category — county jail time followed by a period of mandatory supervision. Counties that have embraced the split sentence model (San Francisco at 14%, Marin at 16%, Alameda at 15%) tend to have lower overall incarceration rates because mandatory supervision allows for community-based reentry programming. Counties that underutilize split sentences effectively choose between the extremes of prison and probation, with less middle ground.

How to use this in practice. When preparing a sentencing memorandum, reference these county-level distributions explicitly. If you are in Contra Costa arguing for probation on a case that would likely receive probation in San Francisco, your sentencing memo should include comparative data showing that probation is the norm for this offense type in neighboring jurisdictions. Judges are not bound by what other counties do, but empirical comparison data can reframe a probation request from "lenient" to "consistent with regional practice." Our sentencing analytics dashboard provides downloadable county comparison data formatted for inclusion in court filings.

The Disparity Problem: Race, Class, and Sentencing Outcomes

Sentencing disparities along racial and socioeconomic lines are not unique to the Bay Area, but they are measurable here — and the data is damning. Across all nine counties, Black defendants receive longer sentences than white defendants for comparable offenses after controlling for criminal history, offense severity, and case disposition type. The magnitude of the disparity varies by county, but it exists everywhere.

In Alameda County, where the population is among the most racially diverse in the region, Black defendants convicted of drug offenses receive sentences averaging 28% longer than white defendants convicted of the same offenses with comparable prior records. In Santa Clara, the gap is 24% for property crimes. In Contra Costa, the disparity reaches 35% for violent felonies — meaning a Black defendant convicted of assault with a deadly weapon receives a sentence roughly one-third longer than a white defendant convicted of the same charge.

Socioeconomic disparities compound racial ones. Defendants who are detained pretrial (disproportionately low-income and Black or Latino) receive sentences 30-40% longer than similarly situated defendants who are released pretrial. This is partly a selection effect — detained defendants are more likely to plead guilty — and partly a presentation effect — a defendant who appears at sentencing in street clothes with family support receives a different judicial response than one who appears in custody orange from the holding cell.

Using disparity data in practice. Disparity data has several practical applications for defenders. First, in Batson challenges during jury selection, statistical evidence of racial disparities in the jurisdiction can support an inference of discriminatory intent when the prosecution strikes jurors of color. Second, in sentencing arguments, presenting county-level disparity data can support a request for a sentence at the lower end of the range — particularly if your client belongs to a demographic group that the data shows is disproportionately sentenced. Third, in policy advocacy and appellate work, disparity data supports arguments for systemic reform under equal protection principles. The court intelligence reports on our platform include judge-specific sentencing patterns broken down by defendant demographics.

Pretrial Detention as De Facto Sentencing

The relationship between pretrial detention and sentencing outcomes is one of the most well-documented phenomena in criminal justice research, and Bay Area data confirms the national pattern. Defendants who are detained pretrial plead guilty at higher rates, receive longer sentences, and are more likely to be sentenced to incarceration than defendants who are released pretrial — even after controlling for offense severity and criminal history.

Across the Bay Area, the pretrial detention rate for felony cases ranges from 34% in San Francisco to 62% in Solano. This variation is driven primarily by bail schedule differences and judicial bail-setting practices. San Francisco's pretrial services program, combined with the DA's stated policy of not requesting cash bail for most non-violent offenses, keeps more defendants in the community pending trial. Solano's reliance on the traditional cash bail system means that defendants who cannot afford bail — overwhelmingly low-income — remain in custody.

The mechanism is straightforward. A defendant sitting in county jail faces immense pressure to plead guilty — particularly if a plea offer includes time served or probation. Even if the defendant has a strong defense, the rational calculus shifts when the alternative to a plea is remaining in custody for months awaiting trial. Defense attorneys in high-detention counties regularly encounter clients who want to plead guilty not because they believe they are guilty, but because they cannot afford to remain in jail. They will lose their jobs, their housing, custody of their children. The plea becomes a survival decision, not a legal one.

Our pretrial data reports track detention rates, bail amounts, and release conditions by county, judge, and offense type. For bail hearings, this data allows defenders to present empirical evidence about flight risk and public safety — the legally permissible bases for detention — rather than relying on the bail schedule's crude proxies. When you can show a judge that defendants with your client's profile have a 94% appearance rate when released on supervised OR, the argument for release becomes much harder to deny.

Bail reform remains one of the most contested areas of criminal justice policy in California. SB 10 (the California Money Bail Reform Act) was passed in 2018 but overturned by Proposition 25 in 2020. Since then, individual counties have pursued their own reforms. San Francisco effectively eliminated cash bail for most offenses through DA policy. Los Angeles has moved toward a zero-bail policy for misdemeanors and low-level felonies. In the Bay Area, the trend is toward less reliance on money bail — but the pace of change varies dramatically by county, and eastern Bay Area counties lag significantly behind their western counterparts.

Reform Trends Reshaping Bay Area Sentencing

Four major legislative reforms have reshaped sentencing in California over the past decade, and their impact on Bay Area counties has been uneven. Understanding how each reform has played out locally is essential for defense practice in 2026.

The cumulative effect of these reforms has been a measurable reduction in incarceration across the Bay Area — but the reduction has been distributed unevenly. Counties that embraced reforms saw 15-25% reductions in their jail and prison populations between 2014 and 2025. Counties that resisted saw reductions of only 5-10%, primarily driven by state-level mandates rather than local policy choices.

For defense practitioners, knowing which reforms apply to your client's case — and how your county's courts have historically applied them — is essential. A Prop 47 reclassification petition that would be routinely granted in San Francisco may face more resistance in Contra Costa. An SB 1437 resentencing petition requires understanding local judicial interpretation of the "major participant" standard. Our sentencing analytics dashboard tracks reform petition outcomes by county and judge, giving you data to assess the probability of success before filing.

Using Sentencing Data in Practice: Three Scenarios

Data is only useful if it changes what you do. Here are three concrete scenarios where county-level sentencing data transforms defense strategy.

What to Watch in 2026: Emerging Trends

Several emerging trends will reshape Bay Area sentencing patterns over the next 12 to 24 months. Defenders who stay ahead of these shifts will be better positioned to serve their clients.

The overarching trend is clear: Bay Area sentencing is becoming more nuanced, more data-informed, and — in most counties — less reflexively punitive. But the pace of change is uneven, and defenders in more conservative counties face an uphill battle to bring local practices in line with regional and statewide trends. Data is your most powerful tool in that fight. When you can show a judge that the sentence being requested is an outlier compared to regional norms, you reframe the conversation from "Should we be lenient?" to "Should we be consistent?"

The criminal justice system aspires to equal justice under law. County-level sentencing data reveals the gap between aspiration and reality. As defenders, we are uniquely positioned to use that data — not just to win individual cases, but to push the system toward the consistency and fairness it claims to embody. Every sentencing memo that includes comparative data, every bail motion that cites pretrial outcome statistics, every policy argument that references racial disparity numbers moves the needle. The data exists. The tools to access it are available. The question is whether we use them.