Acting “tough on crime” can be good politics; Daniel Lurie got elected mayor in part by promising a massive increase in arrests, and District Attorney Brooke Jenkins has dramatically increased the number of prosecutions in San Francisco.
But that approach is also expensive: Lurie is hiring more cops at a cost of tens of millions. Jenkins is pressing more charges, filling the jails at a cost of tens of millions, and clogging the trial courts.
But there’s another price that Lurie doesn’t seem to want to cover: The cost of providing adequate legal defense for everyone charged with a crime.
In fact, the Public Defender’s Office is so understaffed that PD Mano Raju is, on occasion, refusing to take on a relatively small number of new felony cases. Raju argues that it’s a violation of legal ethics for lawyers to take on more cases than they can reasonably handle, and that when attorneys have workloads that are way too high, their clients suffer.
Now Raju is facing Contempt of Court charges in a case that has drawn attention from defense lawyers and public defenders across the country.
Sometime this week, Judge Harry Dorfman will make final a contempt ruling, which conceivably could bring jail time although Dorfman has said that’s not on the table and more likely he will order a fine—which would even further burden the PD’s Office.
The data are pretty clear: According to court records”
From January 2019, to January 2026, active misdemeanor cases rose from 2171 to 3874, a 78 percent increase. Active felony cases rose from 2,861 to 4,461, a 56 percent increase. Overall, active pending cases have risen by almost two-thirds.
Two factors have contributed to this surge. The District Attorney’s Office files significantly more cases, and each case takes longer to close.
Under Jenkins, the DA’s Office is far less willing to accept plea deals or diversion, and is taking more cases to trial. Of the 214 felony and misdemeanor cases Jenkins’ staff tried in 2025, more than half wound up with no conviction, a sign that the trial increase is driven by the District Attorney’s Office’s pattern of overcharging and refusal to engage in realistic plea negotiations.
I have twice seen this up close, as a juror and a potential juror in cases that the jury rejected; in both cases, the charges were without merit, and even silly.
Raju told me that the office needs a lot more lawyers and investigators to handle the load. “There is a downstream Constitutional mandate if you want to arrest and charge all these people,” he said.
“Both felony and misdemeanor cases rose three times as fast as staffing” in the past five years, court documents show.
And yet, Gonzalez told me, the Mayor’s Office not only failed to fund any new lawyers (except for private-grant-funded positions in the immigration unit the office technically approved), but additionally mayoral staff started the year expecting the PD to keep the equivalent of 17 attorney positions vacant as part of a $2.8 million salary savings target, which can only be achieved by delaying hiring at a time caseloads are growing.
This doesn’t add up—and the people who are facing sometimes bogus and often inflated charges are suffering the consequences. Not everyone who is arrested is guilty.
Kawan Clinton, the lead attorney in the New York County Legal Aid Society’s criminal defense unit noted in a letter to Dorfman:
Excessive workloads are the civil rights movement of our time, I ask you to consider which side do you want to be on. This is not a work stoppage or about abandoning clients. This is about compliance with the Rules of Professional Responsibility and the American Bar Association Defense Function Standards that have been ignored for too long causing irreparable harm to our clients. Our most important duty is to ensure the right to counsel is protected and clients do not have an attorney in name only but one with enough time and resources to provide effective representation to prevailing professional norms.
Numerous national studies have set the allowable workload for public defenders at levels far lower than what Raju’s staff currently handle. The Washington State Supreme Court clearly states that “Defender organizations, county offices, contract attorneys, and assigned counsel shall not accept workloads that, by reason of their excessive size, interfere with the rendering of quality representation.”
Dorfman, in his initial ruling, acknowledges those studies and guidelines—but then says they doesn’t matter, because those guidelines aren’t directly specified in California state law.
Raju and Gonzalez told me they will appeal Dorfman’s ruling—potentially creating a precedent-setting case establishing (as the state of Washington did) reasonable standards for public defenders in California.
In the meantime, the Budget and Appropriations Committee needs to make clear to the mayor that “tough on crime” policies are unacceptable unless the Public Defender’s Office is treated the same as the cops and the DA, and given the money to do its job.
