People accused of a crime walk a thin line between freedom and jail while awaiting trial. Now, the organization that for decades helped defendants navigate that precipice has for the most part stopped taking new clients.
No one is ready to take its place.
The San Francisco Pretrial Diversion Project, a pioneering 50-year-old nonprofit that has helped thousands of pretrial defendants stay out of jail, started winding down this summer after the city and courts decided to cut the organization’s annual contract by the end of the fiscal year…