Why California May Change Jail Mental Health Diversion Rules

from Gagandeep SinghCalMatters

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Four years ago, Jerome Grayson was arrested on suspicion of shooting another Sonoma County man in the chest. But his mother, Monique Sexton, believed he could avoid prison. Grayson’s father died of cancer and a forensic psychologist diagnosed Grayson with PTSD.

Under a California law that went into effect in 2018, defendants with qual mental health diagnoses can get treatment instead of going to jail and having their records expunged if they finish. The process, known as a mental health diversion, is not available to people accused of murder and certain sex crimes. Grayson was eligible.

But when the family appeared in Sonoma County Superior Court, a judge denied him a diversion and concluded he was a risk to public safety. Two weeks later, Sexton’s daughter took her own life.

“It’s not justice,” said Sexton, who works in Sonoma County Superior Court and is familiar with the diversion system.

Sexton’s experience is an example of what’s at stake this spring when the Legislature proposes a measure that would change the rules for mental health diversion in ways that would give judges more leeway to deny it. It was formed by lawmakers from both parties who were responding to reports of people committing serious crimes after being diverted.

Currently, once someone qualifies for a diversion, a judge can suspend it if they find the defendant poses an “unreasonable danger to public safety,” as outlined in the 2018 law. Critics say that threshold essentially forces judges to grant a diversion when they don’t think it’s appropriate; supporters say it is appropriately left to the judgments of mental health experts. The new measure would allow judges to block diversion if they believe it would pose a “substantial and unjustified risk” to someone’s physical safety, an easier threshold for refusal.

With her son in prison on a six-year sentence, Sexton says judges already have enough power to deny diversion. “I don’t believe that judicial officers should have any more discretion than they have right now because it’s already being abused,” Sexton said.

the measure People’s Bill 46is from a Democrat Stephanie Nguyen from Elk Grove. It passed the Assembly last year and now advances to the Senate, where it cleared the Public Safety Committee last month on a 5-1 vote.

It is overwhelmingly supported by state police unions and law enforcement leaders, who define the “unreasonable risk” threshold as a dangerous loophole that allows abusers to walk free. Public advocates and civil liberties groups are fighting the bill, saying the 2018 law is working as intended and the changes will deprive vulnerable people of the treatment they need, especially people of color and lower-income Californians who are not represented by private attorneys.

“Judges are already making those decisions,” Newgen said. “It just gives them a clearer standard to apply. It doesn’t expand their role, it clarifies it.”

The bill would also make it more difficult for mental health experts to conclude that a defendant’s mental disorder caused or contributed to the crime. Under current law, experts must conclude that there is a “preponderance of evidence” that the disorder caused or contributed to the crime. Under the proposed law, they must conclude that there is “clear and convincing evidence” that they did.

UC Berkeley law professor Andrea Crider called the bill unnecessary. “My understanding is that the people promoting this legislation are largely conservative district attorneys, and they’ve used what I would describe as ‘extreme emergencies,'” Crider said.

At the same time, Crider also acknowledges that there are real victims in these cases who experienced real harm. “There’s certainly a lot of loopholes in mental health diversion, but it’s not completely broken,” Crider said. “There’s been a lot of success by diverting mental health.”

Law enforcement leaders point to violent crimes

Sacramento County District Attorney Tien Ho supports Nguyen’s Assembly Bill 46 because he believes the current system puts too much of a burden on prosecutors who oppose diversion to prove someone won’t commit a violent crime in the future.

“You go into a bank and you rob that bank or you shoot the teller who survives. So that’s attempted murder. You’re entitled to a mental health diversion for that bank robbery,” said Ho, a Democrat running for Congress. “Then if the doctor says you have insomnia, the judge has to assume you committed the bank robbery and attempted murder because of your insomnia.”

Under current law, a court must find that a mental disorder played a significant role in the commission of the charged crime, according to an analysis of Nguyen’s bill by the state Senate Appropriations Committee.

But once that happens, the judge will almost always give the defendant a mental break, Ho said, “Unless I, the prosecutor, can prove that you will rape, murder or abuse children in the future.”

Sacramento County Sheriff Jim Cooper, a former Democratic Assemblyman, joined Ho in supporting the new bill. Both share inmate records we’re talking about mental health diversion as a way to avoid prison.

Ho cited three Sacramento County cases in which a mental health diversion was granted and the suspects then committed serious crimes.

In May 2025, Sacramento County deputies arrested a 40-year-old man Jordan Murray about the alleged fatal stabbing of Carlos Romero in Fair Oaks. Murray had previously been released from prison on psychiatric diversion.

In March 2026, the 47-year-old Willie King has been charged with murder after allegedly being involved in a deadly shooting in Sacramento. According to prosecutors, King had three prior burglary convictions and had been released from prison before the shooting under the state’s mental health diversion program, despite prosecutors’ objections.

In December 2023 Fernando Jimenez was arrested on murder charges in Placer County. He was under mental health supervision in a Sacramento County case for battery with serious bodily injury and terroristic threats when he allegedly reoffended in Placer County and now has a pending case in that county.

In 2025, the Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office received more than 1,300 mental health diversion requests. Of these, 689 requests were granted only for crimes. As of the end of this March, in 2025 alone, of those granted a mental health diversion, 247 — nearly 36 percent — had been arrested on new charges.

By comparison, 39 percent of people leaving California state prisons are convicted of new crimes within three years of release, according to state data.

Mental health diversion in Los Angeles courts

Opponents of Nguyen’s bill counter that diversion has proven effective in getting people who need it into treatment, and that crime rates have continued to fall since it took effect. They also say it shifts too much power from clinicians to judges, who are more susceptible to political pressure.

California Public Defenders Association cites California Judicial Council data that more than 17,000 people received a mental health diversion from 2019 to 2025, excluding Los Angeles and San Diego counties. During the same period, crime rates in California have fallen and continue to fall to historic lows Total crimes are 188,146 counted in California in 2024.

“If mental health diversion was the public safety disaster its critics claim, the data would show it. It is not,” the public defenders association said in its newsletter.

Los Angeles County Public Defender Ricardo Garcia wrote in a letter to lawmakers that fewer than 10 percent of Los Angeles County mental health program graduates have new cases filed against them after release.

“The Los Angeles County mental health courts are very successful,” he wrote.

Unlike the cases cited by Ho, a judge in Los Angeles allowed the famous, genre-changing singer Lil Nas X to enter a mental health program after an arrest in August. He was found wandering Ventura Boulevard in the early hours of the morning, almost naked, wearing cowboy boots.

When officers arrived, they said he lunged at them. Lil Nas X — Montero’s stage name Lamar Hill — faced four felonies and up to five years in prison.

Granting him a two-year diversion program, the court said: “When he is treated, he is much better and society is much better.“

“You all know something that is easy to lose in the political debate surrounding these bills: This diversion is not a loophole,” wrote California Public Defenders Association Executive Director Kate Chatfield. “It’s a promise that the system will respond to people as human beings, that healing is possible, that crisis doesn’t have to define life.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.