Projects

In 2018, California passed the first Prosecutor Initiated Resentencing (PIR) law in the U.S., empowering district attorneys to review past cases and recommend sentence reductions. The state supported this reform with an $18 million, three-year pilot program across nine geographically and demographically diverse counties, providing resources for prosecutors, public defenders, and community groups. The RAND Corporation was commissioned to independently evaluate the program’s effectiveness.

Despite this groundbreaking legislation, a significant “second-chance gap” has emerged between legislative intent and real-world implementation. Because resentencing laws are discretionary rather than mandatory, outcomes vary dramatically across California’s 58 counties. While some jurisdictions actively pursue post-conviction relief, others exercise their discretion minimally or not at all. Only nine counties participated in the PIR pilot program, and as of early 2025, just 200 individuals have been resentenced—far below expectations.

The Challenge

Public defenders face substantial barriers in identifying eligible cases:

• Overwhelming caseloads across approximately 95,000 incarcerated individuals
• Limited technology budgets (public defenders receive significantly less funding than district attorneys)
• Nearly half of California counties lack institutional public defender offices, relying instead on fixed-rate contracts that typically exclude post-conviction work
• Traditional case review requires expensive data scientists or contractors for statistical analysis
• Weeks or months to obtain data through California Public Records Act (CPRA) requests

Office of the State Public Defender & Redo.io Partnership

Using our open database of over 95,000 prison sentences—encompassing the entire CDCR population—we identified incarcerated individuals serving time for non-violent, non-serious, and non-sexual offenses. Our eligibility criteria focus on individuals sentenced to more than 20 years who have served at least half their sentence, broadly excluding those with homicide, sex offenses, and super-strike convictions.

This statewide initiative ensures that potential resentencing candidates are identified across all jurisdictions—including the 49 counties that did not participate in the PIR pilot program and those without institutional public defender offices. To date, working with OSPD, we have referred over 450 cases for review.

For attorneys who wish to conduct deeper analysis, our AI-powered platform offers advanced capabilities to:

• Instantly search and analyze prison records through natural language queries
• Identify similarly situated defendants using vector-based analytics
• Generate statistical evidence of racial bias for Racial Justice Act claims
• Assess rehabilitation progress and case suitability
• Produce court-ready evidence for prima facie and discovery motions

Important Limitations

Since Redo.io’s database is constructed using the California Public Records Act (CPRA), certain information is unavailable due to privacy restrictions in the law:

• Charging data and arrest records
• Juvenile offense identification
• Health records and rehabilitation milestones (COMPAS scores, mental health treatment, educational achievements)
• Some expunged or sealed offenses

As a result, individuals on our eligibility lists require thorough case file review to confirm suitability, as disqualifying factors not disclosed under CPRA may exist. Our case recommendations are designed to accelerate case discovery, enabling attorneys to focus their time on comprehensive legal investigation of the most promising resentencing opportunities.