Half of people released from S.F. jail before trial were accused of a new crime while free, according to four-year study

Charles Ryan (right), a case manager at the San Francisco Pretrial Diversion Project chats with a coworker in their San Francisco office. The project offers defendants a range of services.

Charles Ryan, a case manager at the San Francisco Pretrial Diversion Project, works in his office cubicle in San Francisco, California Tuesday, July 6, 2021. Ryan, a San Francisco native, was jailed for 6 years while awaiting trial for a 2009 robbery and assault he did not commit.

Roughly half of people charged with crimes and released from jail before their trials in San Francisco in recent years failed to show up for court, and a similar share were accused of committing a new crime while free, a new study found.

More than 1 in 6 defendants allegedly committed a new violent offense, according to the findings from May 2016 to December 2019 published by the California Policy Lab, based at UC Berkeley and UCLA.

The factors behind the statistics are complex, experts and advocates said, and present challenges for the city’s effort to reduce the number of low-risk people in jail before they’re convicted of a crime and get them the support they may need to better their lives.

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