San Diego County is looking to bring artificial intelligence into one of the most consequential documents in the criminal justice system: the pre-sentencing report that helps judges decide whether someone goes to prison, serves time locally, or gets community supervision instead. County officials have put out to bid a contract to build an AI model that would help probation officers write hundreds of these reports every month by summarizing police reports, court transcripts, case notes and other criminal-history records.
The plan, reported by the San Diego Union-Tribune, has already prompted calls for oversight from the county Board of Supervisors. San Diego County released a draft contract for the AI system on September 1 and presented it to interested companies on September 8, according to the Union-Tribune's reporting. Software and AI companies attended that presentation, and proposals — including a required budget — are due by October 16.
County probation officers use pre-sentencing reports to make sentencing recommendations to courts, and those recommendations can shape the length and extent of incarceration or community supervision a defendant ultimately faces. The AI model itself will not make sentencing recommendations, per the Union-Tribune's account of the contract terms, and its use will not be mandatory for probation officers, who will continue to make case reviews and decisions using professional expertise, established policies and individualized client reviews.
Why Probation Officers Are Drowning in Paperwork
The push for AI assistance traces back to a staffing crisis inside the department. A 2025 probation department review found the department was struggling to retain staff, and the department exceeded its overtime budget by 282% that year, the Union-Tribune reported. Probation officers are expected to write about three reports per week, and the department completed roughly 7,800 pre-sentencing reports in the 2024-2025 period.
The department has faced mounting workload pressure. A 2011 law required certain low-level felony offenders to be incarcerated in local county jails instead of state prisons, a shift County News Center describes as part of California's Public Safety Realignment Act, which permanently moved thousands of felony cases onto county supervision. More recently, Proposition 36 made some misdemeanor theft and drug charges into felonies with stiffer penalties, and according to the Daily Journal, that measure generated nearly 35,000 additional felony charges statewide in its first year alone, further straining county probation caseloads. Jennifer Fox told the Union-Tribune she is cautiously optimistic about the technology, saying probation cases are becoming more complicated while expectations rise without relief.
Guardrails Written Into the Draft Contract
The draft contract includes several restrictions county officials say are meant to limit risk. The AI model may access juvenile records of adult defendants but will not be used to write reports for juvenile defendants themselves, per the contract terms described by the Union-Tribune. Data processed by the model can only be used for county business and cannot be shared with unauthorized parties, though companies and subcontractors may use county data to train AI models if they receive written county approval. The contract also requires annual bias and fairness assessments of the model.
Those safeguards echo recommendations from national researchers. The Council on Criminal Justice released case studies applying a User Decision Framework in March 2026, according to the Council on Criminal Justice. A separate May 2026 study conducted by the RAND Corporation for the same council found that public safety agencies often govern AI technologies under broad, single-category policies, warning that failing to distinguish low-risk administrative tools from high-risk decision-support systems creates major governance gaps.
Officials Split on How Much Scrutiny Is Needed
Reaction from county leaders has been mixed. Supervisor Monica Montgomery Steppe called for accuracy, equity, due process, testing for errors and bias, and human oversight, while Supervisor Paloma Aguirre said she will monitor the contract as it moves forward, the Union-Tribune reported. Supervisor Joel Anderson took a different view, saying he trusts county staff and the probation department to avoid errors, bias and other issues. Supervisors Jim Desmond and Terra Lawson-Remer did not return requests for comment, and Chief Probation Officer Tamika Nelson declined to comment. The Board of Supervisors controls county finances and policy but does not control the contracting and bidding process itself.
Not everyone is reassured by the contract's built-in limits. Jonathan Wroblewski said using AI to produce facts that could affect a person's rights or freedom is a risky criminal-justice use, according to the Union-Tribune's reporting. Dan Greene voiced concern that AI could make errors, lose legal nuance, and produce misleading or biased reports, warning that the technology could make hidden judgment calls buried inside otherwise routine summaries.
The Legal Weight Behind Every Report
Pre-sentencing reports are not informal paperwork — they are governed by strict statutory rules. Under California Penal Code Section 1203 and California Rules of Court Rule 4.411.5, felony presentence investigation reports must contain standardized face sheets, detailed crime circumstances, aggravating and mitigating factors, and victim restitution statements, all used by judges to determine probation eligibility or prison sentence lengths, according to California Courts.
Bias could also be a concern in evaluating AI-assisted reports.
A Pattern of AI Scrutiny in California Courts
The proposal also lands amid a wave of judicial pushback against unverified AI use in legal filings statewide. In April 2026, two civil attorneys faced pending disciplinary charges for submitting unverified, AI-hallucinated case citations in court filings, while a third accepted a stipulation involving probation and a short suspension, as Hoodline previously reported. San Diego County's probation department has also drawn separate state scrutiny in recent years: the California Attorney General's Office opened a civil-rights pattern-or-practice investigation in May 2025 into county probation juvenile facilities, including the East Mesa facility and Youth Transition Campus, following complaints of unlawful treatment.
County officials said the goal of introducing AI report-writing is to reduce administrative burden and improve efficiency, not to replace the judgment of trained officers. Whether the department's promised human oversight and annual bias testing hold up as bids come in this fall remains to be seen.
