Georgia council to scrutinize private probation firm

Probation providers also collect fines and probation supervision fees. In many cases, people in Georgia are sentenced to probation only because they can’t afford to pay a traffic ticket on the day they went to court. Getting probation offers more time to pay off the fine, but it also comes with a slate of fees that can more than double the overall cost of the ticket.

At a time when Georgia is rethinking its misdemeanor probation system, a tiny company in Darien is offering an example of how private probation can go wrong.

State investigators found that South Georgia Probation, a mom-and-pop company supervising misdemeanor cases for the courts of Darien and McIntosh County, mishandled payments and billed people for fees they didn’t owe. Employees who were not qualified or weren’t properly registered were allowed to handle confidential files and make decisions on cases.

When it came to collecting payments, the company’s staff improperly threatened people with arrest warrants or falsely told people a warrant had already been taken out, investigators found. Only judges have the authority to revoke someone’s probation, but one of the company’s staff members recorded the strategy as “scare him up with the threat of jail.”

On Monday, a Darien municipal court judge ordered South Georgia Probation to stop handling its probation cases until further notice. The order also called for the city to copy the company’s probation records for an audit. The state’s County and Municipal Probation Advisory Council, which regulates probation providers, is scheduled Wednesday to take up the case of South Georgia Probation during a special meeting in Atlanta.

Shea Smith, the company’s director, said Monday she could not comment on the allegations.

Wrapped inside the story of this little probation operation is the story of why Georgia may be on the brink of reforming its entire system for handling people sentenced to probation for misdemeanors.

Many probation providers — whether they run government offices or private companies — say improper handling of misdemeanor cases is rare. Critics of the current system, however, say the kinds of problems found in the investigation of the Darien company are common elsewhere, too.

“This is standard practice in county and municipal courts across the state,” said Sarah Geraghty, a senior attorney at the Southern Center for Human Rights, which filed a complaint against South Georgia Probation on behalf of a client earlier this year. “It’s one of countless examples of the gross abuse of power by private probation entities. The moment has come for the Legislature to pass significant reforms to curb some of these abuses.”

Gov. Nathan Deal has asked his Criminal Justice Reform Council, a panel of justice system experts, to craft proposed reforms for the state’s misdemeanor probation system. The council is in the midst of a deep study of probation and will present its recommendations before the General Assembly convenes in January.

Deal’s request that the council take on misdemeanor probation came in the wake of his veto of a misdemeanor probation bill passed by the General Assembly this year. The governor said he vetoed the bill because he had concerns that it would allow private probation companies to avoid public disclosure of information about their operations.

Deal also said at the time he was concerned about findings in a state audit that reported widespread problems in the way misdemeanor probation was playing out in many local courts. Georgia places more people on probation than any other state.

A ruling last month by the Georgia Supreme Court — which found that local courts cannot continue with their widespread practice of placing some misdemeanor probation cases on hold if a probationer stops reporting — is prompting judges and probation companies around the state to seek passage of probation legislation, too.

In Darien, located on the Georgia coast between Savannah and Jacksonville, local officials say they didn’t know their local probation office had any troubles until investigators with the County and Municipal Probation Advisory Council found numerous violations last month when conducting a routine compliance check.

“It is very disturbing,” said C. Brett Cook, the joint City/County Manager for Darien and McIntosh County.

“We’re very concerned that the allegations indicate that individuals placed on probation may have been charged excessive fees, other than what were ordered by the judge.”

Cook said he met with Smith Friday to discuss the matter and that the court order was issued Monday morning to protect the probation case files so they could be audited.

“From the city’s standpoint, we’re concerned about whether or not we have been receiving the money we’re entitled to,” he said.

South Georgia Probation was still handling misdemeanor probation for McIntosh State Court on Monday, Cook said.

Cook said it would make sense for state officials to examine the entire probation system.

“In my mind, if there is an issue here, I would imagine that it is not quarantined to here,” Cook said. “It’s very alarming to me, and it does demonstrate that there needs to be reform and there needs to be more oversight.”

Geraghty, the attorney at Southern Center for Human Rights, filed a complaint against South Georgia Probation in July over the way the company handled the probation of a disabled single mother of three children. McIntosh County State Court placed Pamela Hutcheson on probation to give her time to pay a $920 fine for speeding and failure to maintain insurance.

Geraghty said South Georgia Probation added a series of charges on top of the fine: a $50 administrative fee, a $25 drug screen fee and an upfront charge of $420 in probation fees to cover a full 12 months on probation. She was instructed to pay $43 every week. Hutcheson explained that with her limited income she couldn’t afford the payments but was told if she fell behind she would be arrested, according to the complaint. She pawned her kitchen mixer as part of her effort to pay.

When she asked about an alternative to fees, Hutcheson was told by South Georgia that she could work off a portion of her fines through community service. But the complaint said the “community service” she was offered was cleaning the probation company’s office.

“Cleaning the bathroom of this private, for-profit company is not a ‘service’ rendered to the ‘community,’” Geraghty said in her complaint. “This self-dealing arrangement is likely illegal.”

Geraghty said Hutcheson is still on probation and is terrified that she will lose custody of her children if she goes to jail over her inability to pay off her fine.

“She does not need to be under probation supervision,” Geraghty said. “She got a traffic ticket.”

Hutcheson has been threatened with arrest in spite of a U.S. Supreme Court decision that says someone’s probation cannot be revoked over a failure to pay a fine if the person is indigent and can’t make the payments, according to the complaint.

The complaint didn’t lead to any punishment for the company by the County and Municipal Probation Advisory Council. However, the November compliance report found that the company’s probation contract should have included procedures for handling indigent defendants, but did not.

The state’s County and Municipal Probation Advisory County keeps tabs on probation providers across the state, but the judges who use these providers are also responsible for making sure probation is running as it should.

McIntosh County’s state court judge refused to be interviewed when contacted by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Darien’s chief municipal court judge did not respond to messages requesting an interview. The municipal court’s other judge, Bill I. Williams, who sits on the bench only occasionally, said last week that he had not experienced problems with the local probation office.