You know you had a bad year when virtually all the headlines exploded in your face. That is the atmosphere around Georgia’s adult misdemeanor probation industry.
It is a foregone conclusion the state will re-engineer this sector, in which private-sector probation providers supervise most of the 175,000 adults whose misdemeanor offenses, such as traffic tickets, landed them in court. Soon we will know what that might mean for 2015 legislation.
Last year’s attempt at legislation came up short. House Bill 837 would have exempted private probation providers from the Open Records Act. It sailed through the Legislature by wide margins but suffered a well-deserved fate when Deal issued his veto in late April.
Also in April, a state audit reported on 35 companies supervising 80 percent of misdemeanor probationers statewide. This blistering report said some providers rigged the system to force probationers to pay fees early, extended probation terms without authorization, improperly accounted for fees paid by probationers, and even obtained arrest warrants without explicit authority from the court.
The third leg of this troublesome trifecta occurred in November. The state Supreme Court upheld the law that allows counties to contract with private probation services, but it also found one such service had greatly exceeded its authority.
In that case, 13 plaintiffs sentenced to misdemeanor probation in Columbia and Richmond counties asserted that Sentinel Offender Services unlawfully collected supervision fees and violated due process rights, even seeking arrest warrants without court authorization.
In a unanimous opinion, the Supreme Court said a misdemeanor probationer’s sentence cannot be extended beyond the original order. The court said electronic monitoring of misdemeanor probationers is permissible, and it sent several cases back to lower courts for further resolution.
The Council on Criminal Justice Reform will have the next word about misdemeanor probation policy when it reports to Deal in January. Already, it has voted to recommend that all reports filed by private probation services become public records. If enacted into law, this would end any dispute about whether these reports should be exempt from the Open Records Act.
The council will recommend that probationers have access to their files, including all financial records for fines paid, and that arrest warrants should not be sought if a probationer misses a meeting or a payment without notice to the probationer and an opportunity to be heard. There will also be recommendations on protections for indigent defendants, and the conditions under which fines or fees could be converted to community service for those who can’t afford to pay.
Georgia has made remarkable strides in adult criminal and juvenile justice and, most recently, it has started down the long road of adult re-entry programs after incarceration. But we deserve better than what we learned in 2014 about the state of adult misdemeanor private probation.
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