Prison and jail time are not inevitable in California. There are certain mandatory Prison Presumptive Charges, and PC 211 Robbery is one of them but you can persuade the judge if there were extraordinary circumstances. You can make the case that it wasn’t as serious as other forms of robbery such no weapon was used or it wasn’t a home invasion. Interestingly enough, somebody who commits the kind of a robbery where they are stealing something that they are really in need of like food or clothing but they pushed somebody to get out of the store, or they run and they get into a scuffle with the security guard, those can be mitigating factors. That doesn’t make it okay, but it makes it less serious than others. It is feasible to avoid prison time and sometimes even county jail time depending on the facts and circumstances surrounding the case. The mitigating factors and weaknesses in the evidence all play a role in what happens on a case by case basis.