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If you wish to check on a problem or fault you have already reported, contact DfI Roads. If drug offense arrests in these states are consistent with national arrest data, then the overwhelming majority of such drug offenses are for nothing more than possessing drugs for personal use—conduct that Human Rights Watch and the ACLU believe should not be criminalized. Our report also raises concerns about the handling of supervision violations across the board, including those that stem from serious violent conduct.
Many jurisdictions also limit access to lawyers for revocation proceedings. In states such as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Georgia, people are generally incarcerated while they fight revocation, even for minor violations.
Detention in parts of these states regularly lasts for months before any hearing, in violation of international human rights standards.
Sometimes detention occurs in jails that are overcrowded, unsanitary, and lack adequate mental health services or access to effective drug treatment, and where staff have been accused of mismanagement and violence. These circumstances place immense pressure on people to admit to the violations in the hope they can then get out of jail.
Violations often lead to harsh penalties. In our focus states, many people are sentenced to prison-based treatment programs or additional supervision, keeping them under correctional control—at risk of more imprisonment for any slip-up—for years or decades. Other people receive disproportionately severe incarceration terms. Currently, supervision is feeding mass incarceration in the United States. In 20 states, more than half of all state prison admissions in stemmed from supervision violations.
In six states—Utah, Montana, Wisconsin, Idaho, Kansas, and South Dakota—violations made up more than two-thirds of state prison admissions.
In many states, admissions for supervision violations are rising even as prison populations are otherwise falling. For instance, from to , Pennsylvania reduced prison admissions for conduct other than parole violations by 21 percent, while admissions from parole violations grew by 40 percent. Nationwide, most people incarcerated for supervision violations were locked up for violating supervision rules, not new convictions—though, in the states where we focused our research, we document problems with how violations for new offenses are handled as well.
In Wisconsin from to , rule violations accounted for more than 61 percent of all supervision sanctions. In Pennsylvania, rule violations comprised 41 percent of prison admissions for state parole violations and 78 percent of probation revocations from to We were only able to obtain limited data for Georgia.
Black, Latinx, and Indigenous people are disproportionately incarcerated for violations. For instance, in Wisconsin, the proportion of Native Americans sanctioned for violations is seven times higher than their proportion of the state population; for Black people, it is four times their proportion of the population.
Our research demonstrates that violations often stem from disadvantage. Many people cannot afford to pay their supervision fees or other court costs while supporting themselves and their families.
As a result, people often do not make their required payments. While the US Supreme Court forbids courts from jailing people solely because they are poor, judges often fail to adequately assess whether someone can pay. Additionally, many people we interviewed said they stopped reporting to supervision because they did not have the money to pay their required fees for supervision or program requirements, eventually leading to violation proceedings for failure to report.
Many people we interviewed also said that the lack of stable housing impeded their ability to comply with supervision conditions. Housing instability and homelessness often contribute to physical and mental health issues, making it harder for people to hold down jobs, attend supervision-mandated meetings, and regularly update their supervision officer on where they live. Further, people under correctional control are disproportionately likely to have mental health conditions, which can create added barriers to navigating supervision.
Meanwhile, many communities lack accessible, voluntary mental health services and treatment options. High numbers of people are incarcerated for using drugs, including people who are struggling with substance use disorder. Many judges and supervision officers we spoke to argue that jailing people is necessary to stop them from harming themselves or others.
But incarceration is, per se, a disproportionate response to personal drug use. Rather, they assert, governments should invest in voluntary, community-based, harm-reduction services and evidence-based treatment, such as Medication-Assisted Treatment and programs that do not mandate abstinence, since relapse is a normal and expected part of recovery.
Racial bias plays an outsized role in supervision violations. Generations of ongoing systemic discrimination throughout the United States have left Black and brown people less likely to have resources that make navigating supervision feasible, such as financial security, stable housing, reliable transportation, and access to drug treatment and mental health services, compared to their white counterparts. When Black people violate conditions, studies show they are more likely to face sanctions.
Meanwhile, studies show that police disproportionately stop, search, and arrest Black and brown people—making it more likely that they will be arrested in the first place and later be deemed in violation of supervision terms. Nationwide, Black drivers are more likely to be pulled over and searched than white drivers, but less likely to be found with contraband.
While Black and white adults use drugs at similar rates, nationwide Black adults are two-and-a-half times as likely as whites to be arrested for possessing drugs for personal use. Disparities are even starker in some places Human Rights Watch studied. In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, vehicle and pedestrian stop rates for Black people are five times what they are for white people. While judges and prosecutors often argue that supervision provides them with an alternative to incarceration, supervision is also imposed in cases that otherwise may have triggered less severe sanctions.
Regardless, in too many cases it leads people right back into jail and prison, particularly those with limited resources. And supervision is not necessary to prevent serious crime: most violations stem from rule violations and relatively minor offenses for which there is little or no evidence that incarceration enhances public safety or reduces recidivism.
Where people on supervision engage in serious crime, moreover, law enforcement already has mechanisms in place to arrest those allegedly responsible and file charges. In the jurisdictions we examined, pursuing supervision violations in addition to criminal prosecutions for the same conduct often subjects people to lengthier detention and more sanctions, in proceedings that fail to adequately protect their fair trial rights. Many aspects of the supervision systems we documented violate US and international law, which bar disproportionate punishment, discrimination based on race, poverty, and disability, and arbitrary detention, and which require governments to protect the right to life of people in their custody, including by providing them with necessary medical care free of charge.
Various practices we documented in revocation proceedings also raise serious fair trial concerns or are inconsistent with the rights under international law to an adequate standard of living, housing, food, health, and other basic needs. Communities have an opportunity to choose a better path. In recent years, numerous states, including Georgia and Pennsylvania, have made positive reforms—shortening supervision terms, imposing less burdensome conditions, reducing incarceration for violations, and expanding community-based services.
Additionally, court systems are increasingly diverting people charged with certain crimes away from criminal prosecutions. Meanwhile, for certain behavior that causes harm, some communities are developing restorative justice processes, which aim to hold people accountable for their actions and support those who have been harmed but encourage measures like service in and for communities, restitution, and acknowledging and apologizing for wrongdoing, over incarceration as a solution.
Many people on supervision credit these organizations—often which, unlike most supervision-mandated programs, use harm-reduction models and offer assistance without preconditions—with helping them get on the right path.
But such programs are sorely underfunded, and non-existent in many, particularly rural, areas. Human Rights Watch and the ACLU call on governments to build on existing reforms, and divest from supervision and incarceration while investing in jobs, housing, education, and voluntary, community-based substance use disorder treatment and harm reduction services and mental health services.
Investing in communities will help to break the cycle of incarceration and facilitate access to the resources people want and need. Supervision Amidst Covid The research for this report was completed before the World Health Organization declared Covid a global pandemic in March As of July , nine out of the ten largest clusters of Covid in the United States are in jails and prisons.
Even when people on supervision are not incarcerated, frequent in-person reporting requirements put them at greater risk of exposure and infection. These concerns prompted 50 current and former supervision executives to issue a statement calling on supervision departments to limit reporting requirements, reduce probation and parole conditions and sentence lengths, and suspend or severely limit incarceration for rule violations during the pandemic. Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union call on federal, state, and local governments to enact the following reforms to reduce the harms of supervision and help people access resources they want and need:.
Conditions often include reporting as directed, staying away from drugs and alcohol, and paying all court costs. Violating any of these conditions can lead to sanctions, including incarceration, sometimes for prolonged periods of time. This report focuses on the two most common types of supervision, probation and parole, but it also touches to a lesser extent on a third type, extended supervision.
Each state and the federal government use some form of supervision. All three focus states of this report—Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Georgia—use probation. Pennsylvania and Georgia also use parole, while Wisconsin abolished parole and replaced it with extended supervision.
Pennsylvania additionally uses a form of extended supervision in some cases. Probation accounts for the overwhelming majority of supervision terms. Courts sentence people to probation after they have been convicted of a crime, either pursuant to a plea deal or after trial.
Most states place some limits on the lengths of probation terms, but some states place no such constraints — probation can be a few months, 20 years, or in some cases, life. Most states allow people to be released early from prison based on good behavior while incarcerated. People released in this manner typically must serve the rest of their sentence under parole supervision. For instance, if someone is sentenced to 10 years in prison, and released on parole after serving five years, they must serve the remaining five years of their sentence on parole.
Extended supervision is a type of mandatory supervision imposed in some jurisdictions—typically those that have abolished parole. In these jurisdictions, people must serve a period of extended supervision after they complete their full prison terms.
It is essentially a mandatory form of parole, but without early release. The state legislature generally sets the length of extended supervision terms. For instance, in Wisconsin, people must serve a period of extended supervision that is at least 25 percent of the length of their prison sentence.
The federal system, which houses about 10 percent of the total US jail and prison population, [11] uses probation and, since abolishing parole in , extended supervision. This report focuses on state supervision systems and detailed discussion of the federal system is beyond its scope. Some counties in at least eight states, including Georgia, contract with private probation companies to manage and carry out supervision monitoring and compliance.
Human Rights Watch has previously documented distinct human rights concerns related to private probation. This term refers to people who enforce compliance with supervision terms. If a supervision officer believes that someone has violated supervision rules, they generally have wide discretion to determine next steps.
This ranges from issuing warnings; to imposing sanctions, such as mandated treatment, a few days or months in jail, or electronic monitoring; to pursuing revocation of their supervision, which generally means incarceration. Revocation is the most serious consequence available for violations of supervision.
It withdraws the grant of what is viewed as an alternative to incarceration; as a result, the individual faces not only sanctions like those listed above , but also potential sentences of years or even decades in prison. Meanwhile, in some states, probation revocation can lead to incarceration for up to the maximum sentence available for the original offense. As discussed in Section IV, many states, including Georgia and Pennsylvania, place some limits on sentences following revocation in certain contexts.
A detainer is essentially an order that requires someone to be detained in jail. While detainers are also used in other contexts, such as immigration proceedings, we use the term here to refer to orders requiring people to be confined pending violation proceedings. Sometimes, judges must approve detainers, while in other cases, supervision departments can simply file them.
Either way, there is no hearing prior to such detention in the three focus states covered in this report and, to our knowledge, in any jurisdiction in the US. Generally, the supervision officer also files a detainer. Judges typically oversee probation revocation proceedings, while parole boards generally conduct these proceedings for parole violations.
In some states, such as Wisconsin, Administrative Law Judges handle all revocation proceedings. The preliminary hearing is supposed to happen promptly and determine, first, if there is probable cause to believe that a violation has occurred, and second, if the person should be detained until their final hearing see below.
However, as discussed in Section III, in practice, preliminary hearings are seldom held in our focus states and, when hearings do occur, few people are released. The final hearing determines whether someone violated their supervision and the appropriate sentence.
As discussed in Section III, few evidentiary protections apply and, in most states, the revocation determination is based on the preponderance of the evidence standard.
As discussed in Section III, many people waive their final hearings in exchange for a set sentence. These categories sometimes overlap.
For instance, using or possessing drugs can constitute both a rule violation and a new offense. Definitions of what is included in these categories also vary between and even within jurisdictions. Data provided by the Wisconsin Department of Corrections WI DOC that we analyzed for this report categorized conduct as a rule violation only if the underlying conduct did not allegedly constitute a criminal offense, regardless of whether charges were filed or a conviction resulted.
This report is based on extensive desk research into national trends related to the use of supervision in the United States and in our focus states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Georgia; interviews conducted between September and June ; and data on incarceration for supervision violations provided to Human Rights Watch in response to public information requests or obtained through publicly available databases online.
We conducted in-person interviews in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Georgia with 47 people who were, or had been, incarcerated for alleged violations of their supervision. We also spoke to ten of their relatives or partners.
Of these individuals, 38 were Black, 17 were white, one was Native American, one identified as Latino, [23] 41 were men, and 16 were women. We additionally corresponded via e-mail and letter with 14 people confined in Wisconsin prisons, whom we could not interview in person.
Additionally, we interviewed 42 lawyers and six judges in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Georgia, and one lawmaker in Wisconsin. We also interviewed 23 community advocates in these states. We spoke with five supervision department officials in Georgia, four supervision department officials in Wisconsin, one correctional officer in Pennsylvania, and one federal supervision department official. On May 20, , the Pennsylvania Department of Probation and Parole declined our March 6, request to interview Pennsylvania supervision officers, stating they did not have sufficient resources to speak with us.
Supervision departments in Montgomery County, Delaware County, and Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania, did not respond to our March 6, request for interviews. In addition, Human Rights Watch interviewed eight supervision experts, one addiction psychiatry specialist, and one journalist. With respect to the interview procedures used, most interviews were conducted in person and in private, in correctional facilities, courthouses, meeting spaces, or offices, and some were conducted via telephone.
Human Rights Watch researchers took notes during interviews and generally recorded interviews where the setting permitted recordings. We followed an interview guide and asked interviewees a series of questions regarding their background, involvement in the supervision process, the purposes of supervision and whether supervision is fulfilling those purposes, and recommendations for improving supervision systems. We also asked individuals customized questions based on their role.
Human Rights Watch researchers wrote interview memos following each interview and then conducted content and thematic analysis. Human Rights Watch identified people to interview through a variety of sources, including court observations, defense attorneys, community organizations, and online court case databases.
All individuals interviewed provided verbal informed consent to participate and did not receive any compensation for participating in interviews. In some cases, we paid transportation or meal expenses. Individuals interviewed were offered the option of using their real name or a pseudonym in the report. Where possible, we reviewed public court records and case documents provided by individuals we interviewed.
We did not research supervision connected to juvenile justice systems. Accordingly, all figures in the report refer to people who were charged and prosecuted as adults. Since all states allow children under age 18 to be charged as adults in some circumstances, these figures may include children. Human Rights Watch conducted original analysis of data available online through the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Further, Human Rights Watch submitted a series of data requests to state and local correctional agencies in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Georgia.
The requests sought policies, procedures, and guidelines related to the imposition of supervision, as well as individual-level data for people admitted to jail or prison for supervision violations, including biographical information, their supervision sentence, conduct triggering violation proceedings, length of incarceration pending violation proceedings, and the outcome of those proceedings and sentence imposed.
Agencies that responded to our requests for individual-level data, and limitations on the data provided, are described below. Numerous counties in all three states did not respond to our request. If the supervision officer believed that the underlying conduct constituted an alleged new offense—regardless of whether charges were filed—they coded it as a new offense violation.
We filtered this dataset to only include the months with complete cases March — September The data does not include any information about criminal history before that related to the supervision violations that occurred during this time period.
We created grouping variables to aggregate violations and government responses to the violations. We grouped distinct violations into 42 different violation categories and 58 distinct response types into 14 response categories. Unlike the sanctions dataset, in this dataset the WI DOC coded conduct as a rule violation as long as it did not result in a new conviction and sentence.
Human Rights Watch additionally received raw data from the WI DOC, in response to our records request, that merged information from the sanctions and prison admissions datasets. The merged dataset contains a subset of people admitted to prison following revocation for rule violations between January and June , drawn from the prison admissions dataset, and includes the alleged underlying conduct that triggered revocation of their supervision, based on the sanctions dataset.
Additionally, in response to a public records request, Dane County, Wisconsin, provided data on everyone booked into jail between January and January who had a probation or parole violation.
With this data, Human Rights Watch was able to estimate time spent in jail for each individual. However, because the data did not differentiate between people held pending violation proceedings and people incarcerated following violation proceedings, we could not meaningfully analyze this data and thus it was not included in the research for this report.
Human Rights Watch downloaded data on Pennsylvania state prison admissions from the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections. Data provided statewide and county level numbers regarding admissions for state parole violations. Additionally, we acquired data from the Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole PBPP regarding all state parole violation hearings between January and July in response to a public records request.
Information on conditions that were violated was stored within a long string variable. We used text searching to identify the codes for different types of conditions violated for each case. Additionally, we created grouping variables for data on hearings and offenses.
Beyond the generic code for violation types, we could not analyze the specific types of new offense violations because of a lack of standardized data entry. The dataset did not provide information on the penalties imposed for violations. In addition, Human Rights Watch received data regarding all county jail admissions for parole and probation violations from to from Lehigh County, Pennsylvania.
Human Rights Watch coded violation and charge types into categories. This data provided dates for initial incarceration and sentencing, allowing for a computation of the length of detention before sentencing. Due to a lack of standardized data entry, we could not analyze the underlying conduct that led to incarceration.
Human Rights Watch also received data from the Pennsylvania Sentencing Commission regarding probation revocations between January and December However, we did not produce original analysis from this data given the quality of publicly-available analysis of this same data.
The Georgia Department of Community Supervision informed us that they could not provide the individual-level data requested because they merged databases in , and the relevant data was not yet mature enough. The Georgia Department of Corrections informed us that relevant laws did not require them to release the requested data.
Human Rights Watch obtained information publicly available on Georgia county jail websites. We worked with computer science and economics students at the University of Georgia to collect information from Georgia. Human Rights Watch was able to examine data scraped from jail rosters for nine Georgia counties during the course of five months of Summer and Fall June 1 — October To ascertain the types of charges that led to jail bookings, we removed all bookings that were not for new criminal charges or did not involve probation or parole violations, such as people serving jail sentences.
This analysis allowed us to determine what proportion of bookings involved probation and parole violations. The data analyses, focused on descriptive statistics, were completed in R. R code and data is on file with Human Rights Watch. We spent a month at the start of this project defining its scope and selecting states on which to focus, informed by phone interviews with practitioners and advocates, as well as extensive desk research. We chose to highlight Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Georgia because these states had high numbers and proportions of people incarcerated for supervision violations and racial disparities in their data.
Each state also presented advocacy opportunities. When first used as part of the criminal legal system, supervision was designed to divert people away from incarceration and help them reintegrate into their communities.
Supervision became increasingly popular across the US as a tool of rehabilitation. Beginning in the s, supervision fundamentally changed. Legislatures, court systems, and supervision agencies toughened conditions, lengthened supervision terms, increased monitoring, and heightened sanctions for violations.
Additionally, states began imposing supervision in addition to—rather than instead of—prison or jail terms. By the s, upwards of 20 states had either eliminated or dramatically reduced early release to parole. The use of supervision also skyrocketed.
As incarceration in the United States grew nearly five-fold between and , from about , [57] to 2. As of , the last year for which national data on supervision is available, 4. In Wisconsin, one in every 69 adults, or 66, people, were under supervision as of Numbers are particularly stark in some counties we studied.
In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, one in 23 people is on supervision—the highest rate of any big city in the US. Nationwide, most supervision sentences are imposed for low-level conduct. At the end of , one quarter of probation and parole terms were imposed for property crimes, another quarter were imposed for drug crimes—which, nationwide, are overwhelmingly for personal possession [69] —14 percent were imposed for public order offenses, and 22 percent were imposed for crimes considered violent.
Supervision terms can be lengthy. Once people are released to parole, states often require them to serve the full remainder of their sentence under parole supervision—which can be significant. Extended supervision terms can also be long.
For instance, under Wisconsin law, whenever a judge sentences someone to prison, they must also impose a period of extended supervision that is at least 25 percent of the length of the prison term. Probation sentences can be even longer. Sixty-two percent of states cap probation terms for most offenses at five years, but at least five states—California, Georgia, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—place no ceiling on probation sentences.
Most states, including Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, allow for early termination of supervision in certain cases. Supervision disproportionately impacts Black and brown people and those with limited financial means. Nationwide as of , one in every 81 white people were under supervision, compared with one in every 23 Black people. Disparities are even starker in some jurisdictions where Human Rights Watch conducted in-depth research. In Wisconsin in , the last year for which data is available, one in every eight Black men were on supervision—more than five times the rate for white men.
People under supervision are also disproportionately low-income. Poverty in the United States intersects profoundly with race. Supervision is daunting. Nationwide, people under supervision must comply with an average of 10 to 20 conditions a day. While supervision in juvenile justice systems is beyond the scope of this report, it is important to note that, as of —the last year for which data is available—about , children were placed on juvenile probation in the United States.
The way children on supervision are treated varies among states, but they are often subjected to a wide array of rules—sometimes more than 30—that would be difficult for any child to comply with.
As a result, many children break the rules of their supervision, and substantial numbers of them end up incarcerated. Children of color are disproportionately impacted. As of , children of color comprised 46 percent of the US population aged 10 to 17, [] but constituted 55 percent of all juvenile probation dispositions and 67 percent of all children confined for rule violations.
Increasingly, some states are reforming their juvenile probation systems by reducing the use of probation and limiting punishments for violations. Instead, these states reward positive behavior and invest in family and community-based supports. Rules in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania frequently prohibit people from drinking alcohol or entering bars—in some cases, even when their offenses did not involve drinking. Many conditions are vague. Many of the people we spoke with said these rules make them nervous to even leave their homes—especially in communities where many people have criminal records and police are a constant presence.
Will this lead to a revocation? Everyone where I live has a criminal background, so where am I supposed to go? Another common condition is completing certain types of programs, such as substance use treatment if the underlying offense is drug-related, or anger management programs if, for instance, someone was convicted of assault.
Programs can create their own barriers to rehabilitation. In many cases, for example, people must pay for these programs themselves.
Further, violating any rule of the program is itself a supervision violation. Program rules can be wide-ranging and harsh. Studies show that people who participate in programs through probation are more likely to have their supervision revoked than people who do not participate in these programs. Conditions often conflict with each other, for example, requiring people to hold down jobs while also requiring them to attend frequent meetings and treatment programs—typically held during standard work hours.
Typical supervision conditions also include expansive search provisions, requiring people to submit to searches at any time, in any place, and without a warrant. Supervision conditions generally require people to frequently report to an officer—monthly, biweekly, or even weekly.
Many judges and supervision officers interviewed for this report said the conditions placed on people during supervision ensure people get needed services, such as job training, education, and treatment, that they believe will stop them from committing crimes.
Some judges and supervision officers recognize that, given the vast and often irrelevant conditions imposed, supervision frequently sets people up to fail. Supervision is expensive. Criminal convictions already carry fines, fees, and restitution costs that can easily total thousands of dollars.
While these fees may appear small in isolation, they regularly total hundreds or even thousands of dollars. Court debt carries serious consequences. It also makes it harder to get to work—and thus pay off debt.
Additionally, rather than keeping people on supervision for failing to pay, some courts transfer unpaid court debt to a civil judgment. These barriers add to the already steep consequences people face as a result of criminal convictions, which can include further bars on the right to vote and the ability to obtain jobs, professional licenses, student loans, housing and other public assistance, along with potential immigration consequences.
Navigating supervision conditions requires financial security, stable housing, reliable transportation, and, often, access to quality healthcare and mental health services.
Supervision departments are supposed to connect people to these resources. Further, according to leading experts on supervision practices, many supervision departments prioritize enforcing conditions over providing resources. While a few people we interviewed reported receiving some helpful programming, the vast majority of people we spoke to—along with supervision experts—said that supervision provided little support.
Many people reported that, during required meetings, their supervision officers did little to inquire about how they were managing or offer any help. Instead, the officers simply administered drug tests, monitored whether they were employed, and asked if they had been making their required payments. They have no resources, no nothing. Some people are able to find help and support outside of supervision through community-based organizations, often led by people who have been involved in the criminal legal system.
Because courts often offer probation as an alternative to a sentence that involves incarceration, many people plead guilty to sentences carrying lengthy probation terms without fully understanding the risks involved.
Those detained pending trial face particularly strong pressure to plead to probation so that they can get out of jail. By March , Willie White, a middle-aged Black father of seven, had spent six months in a Lowndes County, Georgia, jail, in south central Georgia, waiting for his trial. Less than three months after White pled guilty, he was back in jail for failure to pay his court costs.
The judge imposed a five-day jail term, and then released White to continue serving his probation term. Scared, White stopped reporting, he said.
Then in October , as White was riding his bicycle, Lowndes County police arrested him for possessing marijuana and a pill capsule that White says contained a lawful substance. When we met White in the Lowndes County jail in December , he had already been held for nearly three months. Nobody should be going to prison for that, nobody. This boy just keeps going back to jail, back to jail, back to jail. A judge can sometimes extend the length of probation if a probationer violates the conditions of probation.
Probation is usually tolled suspended when the probationer is a fugitive from justice or serving a sentence and, sometimes, when a violation of probation is pending. Probation supervision can take many forms. Formal also called active probation requires probationers to report as directed to probation officers in person, by mail, or by telephone. Typically, state and county agencies operate supervision departments. A handful of states contract with private probation companies to supervise probationers and monitor compliance.
Probationers on informal also called inactive, court, or summary probation don't have probation officers. They report directly to the court when necessary to provide proof of completion of conditions like community service , pay fines and fees, update contact information, or report a new arrest or conviction.
Probation in felony cases will almost always be formal. Informal probation is more common in misdemeanor cases. When probationers perform well, judges might have the discretion to modify probation from formal to informal. Probationers who violate fail to comply with conditions of probation face consequences ranging from a warning from their probation officers to incarceration.
Probationers are entitled to a hearing in front of a judge when a probation officer or a district attorney alleges a violation of probation. The burden is on the prosecution to prove the violation by a preponderance of the evidence a more likely than not standard. If the judge finds or the probationer admits a violation, the judge decides whether to revoke terminate or reinstate continue probation.
When probation is revoked, the judge can require the defendant to serve the suspended jail or prison time. When probation is reinstated, probation continues with or without modifications to conditions. Probationers successfully complete probation when they satisfy all conditions, attend all required court appearances, and remain crime-free.
Probation typically ends on a date set at sentencing, but probationers who are doing particularly well might earn an early termination. Probationers who successfully complete probation might be eligible to expunge seal, erase, or limit public access their criminal records depending on the nature of the conviction.
If you are facing a sentence that includes probation, be sure to ask your lawyer for information on how probation works in your county or state. If you are uncertain about a condition of your probation, ask a lawyer for clarification.
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