SAN FRANCISCO  When the district attorney in suburban Contra Costa County, Robert J. Kochly, announced last month that he would stop prosecuting certain misdemeanors for lack of money, the resulting outcry was enough to make him cut his own salary to avoid putting the plan in place.

But Mr. Kochly  who agreed to a 10 percent pay cut  is not the only local prosecutor who has floated extreme solutions in a time of dwindling budgets and increased caseloads.

District attorneys in many parts of the country say they are considering prosecutorial rollbacks, including opting not to try some minor crimes, eliminating crime prevention and monitoring programs, and seeking to divert more defendants to so-called community court systems.

The reason: not enough money to pay lawyers to try all those crimes.

“Understaffing is always a problem, and when you talk about cutbacks on top of that it just compounds the problem,” said Christopher D. Chiles, the prosecuting attorney in Cabell County, W.Va., and the president-elect of the National District Attorneys Association.