Most California felonies carry a three-option sentencing range called a triad, and the judge picks one of the three. For the majority of felonies, that default range is 16 months, two years, or three years in custody.1California Policy Lab. Felony Offenses and Sentencing Triads in California More serious crimes have their own longer triads written into the statute, and the final sentence can grow or shrink based on enhancements, prior strikes, probation eligibility, where the time is served, and credits earned in custody. The California felony sentencing chart below walks through each of those layers in the order a court actually applies them.
How the Judge Picks Low, Middle, or High
Penal Code 1170 is the statute that forces the court to choose one of the three triad options when sending someone to prison.2California Legislative Information. California Penal Code 1170 – Sentencing The middle term is the ceiling the judge can reach on their own. Going above it requires more.
Senate Bill 567 changed the rules in 2022. Under the current Penal Code 1170(b)(2), a court can only impose the upper term when the facts supporting aggravation have either been stipulated to by the defendant or found true beyond a reasonable doubt by a jury (or by the judge in a bench trial).2California Legislative Information. California Penal Code 1170 – Sentencing One exception survives: a prior conviction can push the sentence to the high term on the strength of a certified record alone, without going to a jury.
Mitigating factors cut the other way. No prior record, provocation, or a minor role in the offense all point toward the low term.
When a Felony Can Drop to a Misdemeanor
A large group of California crimes are “wobblers,” meaning the prosecution or the court can treat them as either a felony or a misdemeanor. The difference is enormous. A felony can mean years in jail or prison; a misdemeanor caps out at one year in county jail.
Penal Code 17(b) lays out several routes to a misdemeanor. The prosecutor can file the case as a misdemeanor from the start. A judge can declare the offense a misdemeanor before trial. And if the court grants probation on a wobbler, the judge can designate it a misdemeanor either when probation is granted or later, on a motion by the defendant or the probation officer.3California Legislative Information. California Penal Code 17 For a defendant facing a wobbler, pushing the charge down is often the single most consequential move available.
When Probation Replaces Prison
A felony conviction does not automatically mean custody. Under Penal Code 1203, a judge can grant probation where mitigating circumstances exist or where the ends of justice would be better served by supervision than by incarceration.4California Legislative Information. California Penal Code 1203 Felony probation generally runs up to two years and can include community service, counseling, drug testing, and regular reporting to a probation officer.
Some situations make probation presumptively off the table. Using a deadly weapon on another person, inflicting great bodily injury, or carrying two or more prior felony convictions all disqualify a defendant unless the judge finds an unusual case justifying an exception.4California Legislative Information. California Penal Code 1203 The same disqualification covers a long list of specific crimes including robbery, carjacking, kidnapping, murder, and certain armed sex offenses.
Where the Time Is Served: State Prison vs. County Jail
The 2011 Public Safety Realignment Act (Assembly Bill 109) rerouted a large share of felony sentences. Offenders convicted of non-serious, non-violent, non-sex felonies now serve their time in county jail rather than state prison.5California Department of Justice. 2011 Public Safety Realignment Fact Sheet These are often called “1170(h) felonies” after the subdivision that governs them.
County jail is not available if the defendant has a prior serious or violent felony conviction, has to register as a sex offender, or is being sentenced with an enhancement that mandates state prison.6California Legislative Information. California Penal Code 1170h Any of those pushes the sentence back to state prison.
For 1170(h) felonies, judges are expected to impose a “split sentence” unless they find it inappropriate. A split sentence means serving part of the term in custody and the rest under mandatory supervision by the county probation department, with conditions the court sets and the ability to revoke supervision for violations.6California Legislative Information. California Penal Code 1170h
How Enhancements Add Years
Enhancements are additional years tacked onto the base term when specific facts are proven. They run consecutively, so the total is the base triad term plus every enhancement that applies. The two categories that move the biggest numbers are firearms and great bodily injury.
Firearm Enhancements
Penal Code 12022.5 applies broadly to any felony involving personal use of a firearm, adding 3, 4, or 10 years. If the weapon is an assault weapon or machine gun, the enhancement is 5, 6, or 10 years.7California Legislative Information. California Penal Code 12022.5 – Use of a Firearm
Penal Code 12022.53 is reserved for specified serious felonies like murder, robbery, kidnapping, and carjacking. It imposes a mandatory consecutive 10 years for personally using a firearm, 20 years for intentionally discharging one, and 25 years to life when the discharge causes great bodily injury or death.8California Legislative Information. California Penal Code 12022.53 These are the enhancements that drive the longest determinate sentences in California violent crime cases.
Great Bodily Injury Enhancements
Penal Code 12022.7 adds consecutive prison time when a defendant personally inflicts great bodily injury during a felony. The standard enhancement is three years, with longer terms when the facts match a specific subdivision:9California Legislative Information. California Penal Code 12022.7
- Comatose or paralyzed victim: five years
- Victim age 70 or older: five years
- Child under age five: four, five, or six years
- Domestic violence circumstances: three, four, or five years
Each variation is its own subdivision with its own proof requirements, so the prosecution has to charge the one that fits.
Three Strikes: Doubling and 25 to Life
California’s Three Strikes Law, Penal Code sections 667 and 1170.12, escalates punishment for defendants with prior serious or violent felony convictions.10California Legislative Information. California Penal Code 667 Each qualifying prior is a “strike.”
With one prior strike, the sentence for any new felony is doubled, serious or not. A two-year middle term becomes four. The doubling applies to the determinate term, or to the minimum term on an indeterminate sentence.
With two or more prior strikes, the exposure depends on the new offense. If the new felony is itself serious or violent, the sentence is an indeterminate life term with a minimum equal to the greatest of three calculations: three times the normal term, 25 years, or the term the court would otherwise impose with enhancements.11California Legislative Information. California Penal Code 1170.12 In practice, that usually means at least 25 years before parole eligibility.
Voters narrowed the law in 2012 through Proposition 36 (the Three Strikes Reform Act). If the new offense is not serious or violent, the sentence is doubled under the second-strike rule rather than triggering life.10California Legislative Information. California Penal Code 667 Exceptions remain: if the new crime involved a firearm, caused great bodily injury, or qualifies as a sex offense or certain drug offenses, a third-strike life sentence can still apply.
Strike defendants also have to serve the sentence in state prison, cannot receive probation, and cannot have the sentence suspended. There is no washout; the age of the prior strike does not matter.12California Legislative Information. California Penal Code 667 – Penalty for Prior Serious or Violent Felony Convictions
Indeterminate “To Life” Sentences
The most serious offenses sit outside the triad system entirely. First-degree murder carries 25 years to life. Second-degree murder carries 15 years to life. The “to life” phrasing means the offender becomes eligible for a parole hearing after the minimum term but has no guaranteed release date. Special circumstances in a murder case, such as multiple victims or murder during certain felonies, can produce life without the possibility of parole. For these sentences, the Board of Parole Hearings decides when, or whether, release happens.
Multiple Counts: Concurrent vs. Consecutive
When someone is convicted of more than one felony, the court decides whether the sentences run at the same time or one after another. Concurrent sentences run simultaneously, so the defendant effectively serves only the longest. Consecutive sentences stack.
California limits that stacking through a principal-and-subordinate framework. The longest individual sentence becomes the principal term. Every additional consecutive count is a subordinate term calculated as one-third of the middle term for that offense plus one-third of any specific enhancements attached to it. The one-third rule keeps consecutive sentences from simply doubling or tripling the time. Certain serious offenses like kidnapping with separate victims are exceptions and carry the full middle term as the subordinate term.
How Much Time You Actually Serve
Custody credits reduce the time behind the raw sentence number. They come in two forms: credit for presentence custody, and conduct credits earned through good behavior and program participation.
Under Penal Code 4019, a person in county jail earns two days of conduct credit for every four days served, meaning four days in custody counts as a completed term of eight.13California Legislative Information. California Penal Code 4019 – Prisoner Confinement Credits That is a 50 percent reduction when all credits are earned: a one-year sentence becomes about six months. Credits can be lost for refusing work assignments or breaking facility rules.
State prison inmates earn worktime credit under Penal Code 2933 at six months of credit for every six months of continuous incarceration, which also yields an effective 50 percent reduction.14California Legislative Information. California Penal Code 2933 – Worktime Credit
Violent felonies are different. Under Penal Code 2933.1, anyone convicted of a violent felony as defined in Penal Code 667.5(c) can earn no more than 15 percent of the sentence in conduct credits and must serve at least 85 percent of the imposed term. That is the “85 percent rule,” and it applies to offenses like murder, robbery, kidnapping, and assault with a deadly weapon causing great bodily injury.
Restitution Fines
Every felony conviction triggers a mandatory restitution fine under Penal Code 1202.4. The court must impose it in every case unless it finds “compelling and extraordinary reasons” not to and states those reasons on the record. For felonies the fine ranges from $300 to $10,000, set by the court based on the seriousness of the offense.15California Legislative Information. California Penal Code 1202.4 This is separate from any direct restitution ordered to compensate a victim for actual losses.
What Changed Under Proposition 36 (2024)
California voters approved a new Proposition 36 in November 2024, and it changed sentencing exposure for certain repeat theft and drug offenses.
Shoplifting or petty theft of items worth $950 or less, normally a misdemeanor, now becomes a felony when the person has two or more prior convictions for qualifying theft crimes. The felony sentence can reach up to three years in county jail or state prison.16Legislative Analyst’s Office. Proposition 36 Felony property crime sentences can also be extended by up to three years when three or more people committed the offense together.
For drugs, the measure created a new “treatment-mandated felony.” Someone who possesses drugs like fentanyl, heroin, cocaine, or methamphetamine and has two or more prior drug convictions can be charged with this felony instead of a misdemeanor. Completing court-ordered treatment leads to dismissal. Failing treatment carries up to three years in state prison.16Legislative Analyst’s Office. Proposition 36 The measure also generally requires that sentences for selling fentanyl, heroin, cocaine, or methamphetamine with quantity-based enhancements be served in state prison rather than county jail.