Harmful criminals are utilizing San Francisco’s Drug Court docket program as a get-out-of-jail free card, a brand new information evaluation exhibits — and the charges are exploding.
This system is supposedly for nonviolent, low-level offenses linked to drug use — however Drug Court docket circumstances have skyrocketed to greater than 600 criminals avoiding jail in simply the primary 10 months of 2025, 3 times the quantity authorised in 2023.
Purposes additionally surged from about 500 to just about 2,000, a roughly 300% enhance, in line with a San Francisco Chronicle evaluate of court docket information.
One profitable Drug Court docket applicant was profession felony Gregory McDowell, who regardless of having convictions for theft and solicitation of homicide in 2008 — was spared jail time for armed theft after robbing a hairstylist and two shoppers at a salon earlier than carjacking an individual outdoors, all as a result of he had a analysis extreme meth-use dysfunction, the outlet studies.
“The report displays a big danger to public security,” Assistant District Lawyer Jonathan Yang stated, including that it was “inappropriate” for McDowell to get remedy locally.
Regardless of these objections, Superior Court docket Choose Michael Begert allowed him into this system. Begert is now dealing with main blowback for being too lenient.
“It’s worse than I even knew,” stated San Francisco District Lawyer Brooke Jenkins, who believes this system is being abused by violent offenders.
One other stunning case that used the Drug Court docket to skip jail was for an tried homicide tied to a love-triangle.
In early 2025, Ariana Blea hid within the trunk of her love rival’s automobile earlier than stabbing her, prosecutors stated.
However Choose Begert allowed Blea into Drug Court docket, citing her nervousness dysfunction and substance use. Prosecutors have since tried a number of instances to take away her from this system, arguing she continued to harass the sufferer and put her security in danger.
And it’s not simply tried homicide and armed theft.
Extra severe circumstances have tried to get into Choose Begert’s soft-touch Drug Court docket, together with a high-profile drunk driving hit-and-run case that killed two girls on New 12 months’s Eve in 2020 and sparked widespread outrage in San Francisco.
The defendant, Troy McAlister, requested diversion, arguing that his methamphetamine use performed a job within the crash. Begert confronted intense public criticism and threats of a recall if he authorised the request and in the end refused to spare him jail by way of the psychological well being diversion program.
Psychological well being diversion as soon as made up a small fraction of Drug Court docket approvals. However by 2025 it jumped to 91% of authorised circumstances — up from simply 12% in 2022, per court docket information.
A San Francisco deputy public defender argued this system has safeguards in place and blamed the uptick in Drug Court docket purposes on prosecutors unfairly “over-charging” defendants.
The deputy public defender additionally stated town’s rampant drug use scene is chargeable for the bump in purposes.
“I feel it’s a mirrored image of the truth on the bottom,” she stated.
