The Georgia Supreme Court rules private probation legal but extending sentences is not
/The Georgia Supreme Court ruled that it is constitutional for private probation companies to supervise misdemeanor offenders but illegal for courts to lengthen a probationer’s sentence after it’s been imposed.
The ruling was released Monday in a lawsuit that contended that Sentinel Offender Services and other private probation companies were illegally imposing requirements such as electronic monitoring and extended sentences on probationers. The court partially affirmed and partially reversed earlier rulings in the case.
Sentinel may have to reimburse fees collected from probationers in one county, Columbia, because the court said it did not have a legal contract with the county.
Georgia uses private probation companies more than any other state. Those companies collect about $40 million a year in supervision fees from low-level misdemeanor offenders, primarily from people who didn’t have the means to pay court fines for offenses such as illegal lane change, drunken driving or trespassing.
One of the lawyers for the probationers called the system “cash register probation” because additional requirements are tacked on by the companies in order to increase fees they can collect.
Private probation company lawyer James Ellington argued before the court earlier this year that without the current system, municipal and state court judges would simply have to jail people who couldn’t pay fines immediately because there would be no way to enforce their sentences. Consequently, jails would become crowded and taxpayers would have to cover the costs of keeping low-level misdemeanor probation violators locked up.
