The San Francisco district attorney’s office is looking to change California’s constitution after a recent state Supreme Court decision made it harder for the office to hold people charged with low-level offenses in jail before trial, DA Brooke Jenkins said on Tuesday morning.
Since the April 2026 ruling, In re Kowalczyk, judges must find that defendants fall within the state constitution’s limited definition of a “no-bail” case. The latter applies primarily to violent crimes and is the bar for holding suspects in jail while awaiting trial. Before that ruling, a defendant could be detained for a number of other reasons, including previous failures to appear in court.
The result has been far fewer people in jail; on Saturday, San Francisco recorded its lowest jail population in three years, and many more pretrial releases.
At a Tuesday morning press conference on the city’s response to retail theft, Jenkins said that the Kowalczyk ruling has made it harder to prevent repeat offenders from further committing crimes.
”We are limited in being able to do what we need to do to keep those people from committing more theft in our stores,” Jenkins said. “So we will work on this to make sure that we get the California Constitution changed so that we, as a court system, can do what we need to restrain those who refuse to follow the law.”
In a subsequent statement from the DA’s office, Jenkins confirmed that she is “working to advance legislation” to give judges more power over detention, but did not explain how that legislation is being pushed forward.
She said the limits to detention resulting from Kowalczyk are “rooted in our state Constitution,” and that “California voters have the power to change” those limits.
“I believe we need to do exactly that,” Jenkins wrote.
At the Sept. 8 press conference, city officials introduced plans to address retail theft, noting that they have heightened enforcement and increased collaboration with retailers.
Mayor Lurie pointed to a “nearly 20% decline in larceny cases so far this year,” adding that “SFPD officers have made 844 retail theft arrests,” in the last six months, “an increase of 27% over the previous six months.”
But Jenkins said there is still work to do. And that starts with keeping the “most prolific thieves in our city” in jail while their cases are being investigated, she said.
There’s no public data yet that can confirm rising rearrest rates result from the Kowalczyk decision, but Jenkins said that her office is tracking re-arrest rates of those released pretrial.
“We have seen [re-arrests] a fair amount, but we are waiting until we can collect enough data to really talk about that more openly,” Jenkins said.
The San Francisco public defender’s office said it was disappointed in Jenkins’ words.
“The California Supreme Court’s Kowalczyk decision was a powerful endorsement of our state and federal Constitutions’ most basic tenets — that people are innocent until proven guilty and have a right to due process,” the office wrote.
“It is disappointing and telling that the district attorney appears to oppose these most basic of rights.”
The best thing the DA’s office can do for now, Jenkins said at the press conference, is make sure that individuals released pretrial are quickly arrested if they commit another crime.
But, she added, her office is preparing to make the case in court and to the public “that something does need to change.”
she’s a joke.
a bad joke
so the woman who quit her job to work for a PAC against her boss, denied getting paid, then admitted she got 100k for it? The woman who swore she would prosecute a cop who literally shot someone in the back from the open window of his patrol car – on his third day on the job – and was arrested on the spot by another SFPD. Then promptly let him go as soon as she could; with the arresting officer opening a lawsuit against her, which was dropped and he magically had enough to retire? The one who swore to prosecute a cop who shot someone who was literally on their knees with their hands up after stealing a candybar from walgreens – ON VIDEO? Nope, cop set free. She lied and took payoffs and supports the worst of SFPD, making good cops leave. With her record, she could say 1+1=2 and we’d all be justified in being suspicious.
Makes sense, Jenkins and her allies also pleaded with Trump’s Supreme Court to rule in their favor in Grant’s Pass, so that they could imprison homeless people rather than offer them shelter. Jenkins’ office is cruel, and fits right into the blue-city version of MAGA policing.
”We are limited in being able to do what we need to do to keep those people from committing more theft in our stores.”
Gotta love that the Crooked Criminal Right Wing DA’s reaction to petty theft misdemeanants not being kept incarcerated before being convicted of any crime is… we need to amend the California Constitution so that we can keep people in cages longer before they are found guilty.
I suppose she needs to please her SuperPAC funders from the tech right wing fascist movement and AIPAC.
Maybe we should invest in something more worthwhile…. like I don’t know, housing? Treatment programs? Restorative justice courts? Something that addresses the root causes of petty theft–you know, poverty, addiction, mental illness. But no… law enforcement for thee but not for Crooked horseface.
The Democratic Regime nominated and appointed the vast majority of Judges.
So, the electorate, who has marched to the tune of the aforementioned Machine,
are responsible.
Google’s AI says she’s not on crutches,asked if I could tell Google where I saw this ( with a link to your site).
UmmhNBC Bay Area and your site.
Watch out- AI denies youse guys validity?
Simply curious… why is the DA using crutches?
Funny how DA Jenkins wants to keep people with a history of failing to appear in court locked up. I mean, who wouldn’t prefer giving repeat offenders yet another opportunity to rack up new charges while waiting for a publicly funded attorney to help get them back on the street—at taxpayer expense, of course?
And who could possibly disagree with PSPSPS’s comment below? What a joke.
Let’s modernize the chain gang with a penal system so exquisitely irritating that nobody will ever want to reoffend. Picture a humane, high-tech deterrent: inmates housed in outdoor tents, tracked by ankle monitors that deliver a swift shock for boundary violations or offenses and fueled entirely by a strict culinary regimen of tofu and cabbage three times a day. Good behavior earns actual rewards, while non-compliance triggers scaling sentences: one week for a first strike, one month for a second, and three months for a third. The psychological kicker? Minor labor with eight straight hours of “Barbie Girl” on absolute, unyielding repeat. It’s safe, it’s cost-effective, and it is completely unendurable.