If your charge is a personal-use drug offense named in Penal Code §1000 and you have no disqualifying record, you can likely seek PC 1000 pretrial diversion. Complete the program and the court must dismiss the case, meaning no conviction ever gets entered against you. The statute itself, Penal Code §1000, spells out the eligibility rules, and one of the biggest practical upsides is that a dismissed case generally avoids the employment and immigration fallout that a conviction carries, though immigration outcomes always depend on the specific facts of your case.
TL;DR:
- Eligibility requires no controlled-substance conviction in the past five years, no violence or sale allegations, and no recent felony convictions, which can result in automatic disqualification.
- Only certain drug possession or use charges qualify for PC 1000, excluding cases involving drug sales, trafficking, or violence, and specific code sections listed in the statute.
- Successfully completing a 12 to 18-month approved program leads to mandatory case dismissal with no conviction recorded, but failure to comply reactivates prosecution rights.
- Prosecutors review eligibility at arraignment based on documented criminal history, and having a prepared record ahead of time can improve chances of acceptance.
- Proper pretrial documentation, including treatment plans and progress reports, can help expedite referral and increase the likelihood of case dismissal under PC 1000.
Table of Contents
- Who Is Eligible for PC 1000 in California?
- Which Drug Charges Qualify Under PC 1000?
- How Does the PC 1000 Process Work From Arraignment to Dismissal?
- What Does the Program Actually Cost, and How Long Does It Take?
- PC 1000 vs. Proposition 36: Which One Applies to You?
- How a Pretrial Mitigation Partner Can Strengthen Your Case
- Where to Read the Statute and Find Certified Programs
- Why PC 1000 Works Better Than People Expect, and Where It Falls Short
- Get Court-Ready Documentation Before Your Arraignment
- Sources
- FAQ
Who Is Eligible for PC 1000 in California?
Eligibility under §1000 comes down to four conditions written directly into the Penal Code. Meet all four and a prosecutor has to consider you for diversion; miss even one and you’re likely out.
- No qualifying conviction in the past five years. You cannot have been convicted of a controlled-substance offense in the five years before your current charge.
- No violence alleged in the current case. Charges involving force, threats, or a violent act disqualify you regardless of the drug charge itself.
- No contemporaneous sales-related allegations. If police or prosecutors allege you possessed drugs for sale, or the case involves trafficking, PC 1000 is off the table.
- No felony conviction within the prior five years. A recent felony, even an unrelated one, can knock out eligibility.
The prosecutor reviews your case at arraignment and must state your eligibility on the record or file it in writing. That review happens fast, often within the same court appearance where you enter your plea, so having your history documented ahead of time matters.
A few edge cases trip people up. If you’ve used diversion before, some counties will still allow a second pass depending on how long ago it was and what the new charge involves, but expect more prosecutorial pushback. Misdemeanor charges tend to move through this process more smoothly than felony-level drug charges, even when the felony charge is technically eligible, simply because prosecutors scrutinize felony files more closely.
Before your arraignment, pull together your arrest report, any prior conviction dates, and a summary of your criminal history. Handing your attorney a clean timeline, rather than making them reconstruct it from court records, speeds up the eligibility conversation with the prosecutor considerably.
Which Drug Charges Qualify Under PC 1000?
Not every drug charge in California qualifies for this program. The statute names specific code sections, and if your charge isn’t on that list, PC 1000 simply doesn’t apply to your case.
- Health & Safety Code §11350 — simple possession of a controlled substance for personal use.
- Health & Safety Code §11357 — possession of marijuana in amounts above the legal personal limit.
- Health & Safety Code §11364 — possession of drug paraphernalia.
- Health & Safety Code §11365 — being present where drugs are being unlawfully used.
- Health & Safety Code §11377 — possession of a controlled substance such as methamphetamine.
- Health & Safety Code §11550 — being under the influence of a controlled substance.
- Vehicle Code §23222(b) — driving with marijuana in the vehicle.
- Penal Code §381 — possession or use of certain toxic vapors.
- Penal Code §647(f) — public intoxication tied to drug use rather than alcohol.
- Health & Safety Code §11358 and §11368, in narrower circumstances involving personal-use cultivation or obtaining drugs through a fraudulent prescription.
What’s excluded is just as important. Possession for sale, manufacturing, trafficking, and any charge involving violence sit outside this list entirely, no matter how minor the drug quantity involved. If your charge involves a sale allegation attached to a qualifying possession charge, the sale allegation typically controls, and PC 1000 won’t apply.
How Does the PC 1000 Process Work From Arraignment to Dismissal?
The path from arrest to dismissal follows a fairly predictable sequence, though timing varies by county.
- Prosecutor eligibility review. At arraignment, the prosecutor checks your record against the four statutory conditions and either declares you eligible on the record or files a written statement.
- Not guilty plea. Unlike the old Deferred Entry of Judgment system, you plead not guilty and keep that plea in place throughout diversion. You may need to waive your right to a speedy trial so the case can pause while you’re in the program.
- Referral to a certified program. The court refers you to a program certified by the county drug program administrator, or one the court and county deem credible and effective at no cost to you, per §1000’s placement rules.
- Active participation. You attend treatment or education sessions, submit to periodic drug testing, and your program reports your progress back to the court on a set schedule.
- Minimum program period. Programs typically run 12 to 18 months before the court will even consider dismissal, though some counties move faster for straightforward cases.
- Dismissal or consequences. Complete the program successfully and the court must dismiss the charge. Fail to comply and the case returns to active prosecution, with your not guilty plea and full trial rights still intact.
One protection worth knowing: drug test results from your program can’t be used to start a new criminal case against you. That firewall exists specifically to keep people honest with their treatment providers without fear that a positive test becomes new ammunition for prosecutors. If the prosecutor denies eligibility, you can challenge that determination, though the standard for reversing a denial is fact-specific and depends heavily on how the record was built at arraignment.
What Does the Program Actually Cost, and How Long Does It Take?
Most PC 1000 programs run 12 to 18 months, though the exact length depends on your county and the severity of your underlying charge. Some counties move people through education-focused courses in closer to a year; others require longer outpatient treatment for anyone with a more involved substance history.
Drug testing happens throughout the program on a schedule your provider sets. As noted above, those results feed into your progress reports to the court, not into a new prosecution file.
Costs break down into two categories:
- Court administrative fees, which are statutorily capped, commonly cited around $300 for misdemeanor cases and up to $500 for felony cases.
- Program fees, which vary widely by county and provider and depend heavily on program intensity, with a classroom-style education course usually costing less than an intensive outpatient treatment schedule.
Pro Tip: Ask your provider for a written fee schedule before you commit. Programs that quote a flat number without breaking down testing fees, session fees, and administrative costs tend to surprise clients later with add-on charges.
The payoff for sticking with it is real. On completion, the court dismisses the charge and no conviction is ever entered, which gives you a meaningful shield in most employment background checks and many licensing applications. Removing the old guilty-plea requirement in 2018 also matters if you’re not a citizen, since a conviction can trigger consequences a dismissal generally avoids, though immigration outcomes still depend on the specific facts of your case and should be reviewed with an immigration attorney.
PC 1000 vs. Proposition 36: Which One Applies to You?
These two programs get confused constantly, and the difference matters enormously for your record.
- Timing. PC 1000 is pretrial diversion. Prop 36 is post-conviction, meaning you’ve already been convicted and placed on probation before treatment begins.
- Plea. PC 1000 lets you plead not guilty and keep that plea. Prop 36 requires you to plead guilty or no contest first.
- Outcome. Complete PC 1000 and the court must dismiss your case. Complete Prop 36 and you still have a conviction on your record, just with probation satisfied.
- Duration and intensity. PC 1000 programs run roughly 12 to 18 months. Prop 36 treatment periods and probation terms often run longer and carry more court supervision.
Courts sometimes steer defendants toward Prop 36 when a prior conviction or a more serious drug history makes PC 1000 unavailable. Our breakdown of PC 1000 vs. Prop 36 goes deeper into which defendants end up in each track and why the distinction affects your record for years afterward.
How a Pretrial Mitigation Partner Can Strengthen Your Case
Prosecutors deciding whether to file that eligibility declaration at arraignment respond to documentation, not promises. A court mental health evaluation, a confirmed placement at a certified program, and a testing plan already in motion tell the prosecutor you’re serious before they’ve made a decision. That kind of package, built and delivered before arraignment, often moves the eligibility conversation forward faster than waiting for the court to sort it out on its own.
A pretrial mitigation partner can coordinate exactly this kind of documentation with defense counsel: substance-abuse treatment placement, drug and alcohol testing, and progress reports formatted for the court. Before hiring any mitigation partner, ask three things: does the program they use carry county certification, can they show you a sample progress report, and how fast can they deploy testing and treatment once you retain them?
Where to Read the Statute and Find Certified Programs
For the statutory text itself, go straight to Penal Code §1000. For legal-aid explanations written for defendants and counsel, the ILRC’s diversion guide covers the 2018 reforms in plain language. If you need treatment referrals while you sort out your legal options, the SAMHSA national helpline connects callers to local resources.
Why PC 1000 Works Better Than People Expect, and Where It Falls Short
The conventional wisdom treats diversion programs as a formality, something you show up for until the clock runs out. That undersells what PC 1000 actually does. A mandatory dismissal on completion is a genuine statutory guarantee, not a judge’s discretion call, and that distinction is the whole point of the program existing in the current form since 2018.
Where the conventional wisdom oversells it is the assumption that eligibility is automatic once you’re charged with a qualifying offense. It isn’t. Prosecutors have real discretion at that arraignment review, and a thin file with no context about your history or your intent to get treatment gives them nothing to hang a favorable declaration on. The defendants who get referred quickly are usually the ones who showed up with their documentation already assembled, not the ones who left it to the court to figure out.
The other place people get it wrong is assuming Prop 36 and PC 1000 are interchangeable fallback options. They’re not. One keeps your record clean if you succeed; the other leaves a conviction in place no matter how well you do in treatment. If your attorney mentions Prop 36 before exhausting whether PC 1000 applies, ask why.
— Jake
Get Court-Ready Documentation Before Your Arraignment
Exectreatmentsolutions builds the exact kind of mitigation packet that gets PC 1000 referrals moving faster: mental health evaluations, substance-abuse treatment placement at court-recognized programs, drug and alcohol testing, and progress reports written the way courts actually want to see them. Unlike waiting on a public program intake list or piecing together your own documentation, you get a coordinated packet built to align with what the prosecutor and court are reviewing at arraignment.
That matters most in the days between arrest and arraignment, when there’s little time to assemble a credible treatment history from scratch. Exectreatmentsolutions works directly with your defense attorney to produce that documentation on a fast timeline, then keeps testing and reporting running throughout your program so the court sees consistent progress, not gaps. If you’re facing a qualifying charge and want your eligibility case built before you ever step into court, start with Executive Treatment Solutions’ pretrial mitigation and court advocacy services and talk to your attorney about deployment timing today.
This article is general information, not a substitute for advice from a qualified lawyer. Consult a qualified legal professional about your own circumstances before acting on anything here.
Sources
- California Penal Code §1000
- PC 1000 California: Eligibility, Requirements, and Costs – LegalClarity
- PC 1000 Drug Diversion in California | Griffin Law Office, APC
- New California Pretrial Diversion for Minor Drug Charges
FAQ
What Is the New Diversion Law for Drug Charges in California?
Since January 1, 2018, PC 1000 functions as true pretrial diversion: defendants plead not guilty and enter treatment before conviction, and successful completion results in mandatory dismissal with no conviction entered.
How Many Times Can You Get Pretrial Diversion in California?
The statute doesn’t set a hard numeric limit, but prosecutors weigh prior diversion history heavily when deciding whether to grant it again, and a recent successful or failed attempt can affect that discretion.
Is Pretrial Diversion a Good Option Compared to Fighting the Charge?
For most qualifying personal-use drug charges, diversion offers a faster, lower-risk path to a dismissal than a trial does, since successful completion guarantees dismissal under §1000 without the uncertainty of a courtroom outcome.
What Happens if You Fail a PC 1000 Program?
If you don’t complete the program, the case returns to active prosecution, and you keep your full trial rights since you never entered a guilty plea to begin with.
What Is the Difference Between PC 1000 and Judicial Diversion?
PC 1000 is a specific statutory pretrial diversion program for named drug offenses, while broader judicial diversion authority can apply more flexibly at a judge’s discretion to other misdemeanor cases; both aim for dismissal but rest on different legal grounds and eligibility standards.
