H U M A N
R I G H T S
W A T C H

PROFITING FROM PROBATION
America’s “Offender-Funded” Probation Industry

Profiting from Probation
America’s “Offender-Funded” Probation Industry

Copyright © 2014 Human Rights Watch
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN: 978-1-623131-005
Cover design by Rafael Jimenez

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FEBRUARY 2014

978-1-623131-005

Profiting from Probation
America’s “Offender-Funded” Probation Industry
Summary ..............................................................................................................1
Recommendations ................................................................................................ 7
To State Governments where Privatized Misdemeanor Probation is Permitted............................ 7
To Courts and Local Governments that Use Private Probation Companies ................................. 8
To Probation Companies .......................................................................................................... 9

Methodology ....................................................................................................... 10
I. Background: Why Privatize Probation Services? .................................................. 12
Probation in Misdemeanor Cases ............................................................................................ 12
Financial Pressures on Local Courts and Low-Income Offenders .............................................. 13

II. Overview of the Private Probation Industry ......................................................... 15
The “Offender-Funded” Business Model ................................................................................. 15
Scale and Economics of the Industry ....................................................................................... 16
Major Players.......................................................................................................................... 19
Judicial Correction Services ............................................................................................. 20
Sentinel Offender Services .............................................................................................. 20

III. Probation Fees, Financial Hardship, and the Poor ............................................. 22
Supervision Fees ....................................................................................................................23
“Pay Only” Probation........................................................................................................ 25
Supervision Fees and “Pay Only” Probation: A Tax on Poverty ........................................... 27
Pretrial Supervision Fees ..................................................................................................32
The Crushing Costs of Other Probation Company Fees and Services.........................................32
Electronic Monitoring and Alcohol Monitoring................................................................... 33
Drug Testing ...........................................................................................................................36
“Moral Reconation Therapy” and Other Services ..................................................................... 37

IV. Ignoring Offenders’ Inability to Pay ................................................................. 38
“Animal Control” in Dekalb County, Georgia .............................................................. 41

Conflicts of Interest ..........................................................................................................42

V. “I Hope You Have My Money”: Abusive Collection Tactics ................................. 46
Threats of Incarceration ......................................................................................................... 49
Jailing Offenders to Induce Payment........................................................................................ 51
Hidden Costs to the Public ...................................................................................................... 53

VI. Where Responsibility Lies: Companies, Courts, and Governments ..................... 55
Local Realities: Little Oversight and Unfettered Company Discretion ........................................ 56
Inappropriate Delegation of Court Responsibilities ........................................................... 59
Weak State Government Oversight .......................................................................................... 61
Georgia: A Credible Model With Serious Flaws ................................................................. 62
Transparency and its Limits........................................................................................63
Audits and Investigations ..........................................................................................63
Other States: Weak or Nonexistent Oversight................................................................... 64

VII. Human Rights Norms and “Offender-Funded” Probation .................................. 68
Acknowledgments .............................................................................................. 72

Summary
The United States Supreme Court has ruled that a person sentenced to probation cannot
then be incarcerated simply for failing to pay a fine that they genuinely cannot afford. Yet
many misdemeanor courts routinely jail probationers who say they cannot afford to pay
what they owe—and they do so in reliance on the assurances of for-profit companies with a
financial stake in every single one of those cases.
Every year, US courts sentence several hundred thousand people to probation and place
them under the supervision of for-profit companies for months or years at a time. They
then require probationers to pay these companies for their services. Many of these
offenders are only guilty of minor traffic violations like speeding or driving without proof of
insurance. Others have shoplifted, been cited for public drunkenness, or committed other
misdemeanor crimes. Many of these offenses carry no real threat of jail time in and of
themselves, yet each month, courts issue thousands of arrest warrants for offenders who
fail to make adequate payments towards fines and probation company fees.
This report, based largely on more than 75 interviews conducted with people in the states
of Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi during the second half of 2013, describes patterns of
abuse and financial hardship inflicted by the “offender-funded” model of privatized
probation that prevails in well over 1,000 courts across the US. It shows how some
company probation officers behave like abusive debt collectors. It explains how some
courts and probation companies combine to jail offenders who fall behind on payments
they cannot afford to make, in spite of clear legal protections meant to prohibit this. It also
argues that the fee structure of offender-funded probation is inherently discriminatory
against poor offenders, and imposes the greatest financial burden on those who are least
able to afford to pay. In fact, the business of many private probation companies is built
largely on the willingness of courts to discriminate against poor offenders who can only
afford to pay their fines in installments over time.
The problems described in this report are not a consequence of probation privatization per
se. Rather, they arise because public officials allow probation companies to profit by
extracting fees directly from probationers, and then fail to exercise the kind of oversight
needed to protect probationers from abusive and extortionate practices. All too often,
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offenders on private probation are threatened with jail for failing to pay probation fees
they simply cannot afford, and some spend time behind bars. This report tells many of
their stories.
In Georgia, Thomas Barrett pled guilty to stealing a can of beer from a convenience store
and was fined US$200. He was ultimately jailed for failing to pay over a thousand dollars
in fees to his probation company, even though his entire income—money he earned by
selling his own blood plasma—was less than what he was being charged in monthly
probation fees.
In Mississippi, a middle-aged woman was fined $377 for driving without a valid license.
Months later, she called the court in tears because her company probation officer was
threatening to have her jailed over $500 in unpaid supervision fees she said she could not
afford. At the time she was trying to make ends meet working the night shift at a local gas
station. Court officials told Human Rights Watch that she had already paid off her entire
fine to the court, but still owed money to her probation company—and that the court had in
no way authorized the probation company to threaten her with arrest.
In Alabama, a judge told Elvis Mann that he would go to jail unless he came up with $500
by the end of the day to pay part of what he owed in fines and probation company fees. His
wife Rita spent an afternoon frantically begging and borrowing money from members of the
couple’s church congregation to keep her husband from going to jail that very day. He had
already been on probation for several years and had paid thousands of dollars in fines and
probation company fees, but still owed thousands more.
Traditionally, courts use probation to offer a criminal offender conditional relief from a
potential jail sentence. If the offender meets regularly with a probation officer and
complies with court-mandated benchmarks of good behavior for a fixed period of time,
they escape a harsher sentence the court would otherwise impose. Courts in some US
states charge offenders fees to help defray the costs of running a probation service. This is
called “offender-funded” probation.
Probation companies offer courts, counties, and municipalities a deal that sounds too
good to be true—they will offer probation services in misdemeanor cases without asking
for a single dime of public revenue. All they ask in return is the right to collect fees from the
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probationers they supervise, and that courts make probationers’ freedom contingent on
paying those fees. Those fees make up most probation companies’ entire stream of
revenue and profits.
Some local officials turn to probation companies because they are facing genuine financial
hardship. An increasing number of counties and municipalities depend on local courts as
sources of revenue by trying to fund through misdemeanor fines what they cannot or will
not fund through taxation. But the same courts often argue that they cannot afford to hire
clerks or other personnel to track whether offenders on long-term payment plans are
paying what they owe in fines.
Many courts have repurposed probation into a debt collection tool and are primarily
interested in the services of probation companies as a means towards that end. In what is
euphemistically referred to as “pay only” probation, people are sentenced to probation for
just one reason: they don’t have money and they need time to pay down their fines and
court costs. Pay only probation is an extremely muscular form of debt collection
masquerading as probation supervision, with all costs billed to the debtor. It is essentially
a legal fiction and it is the cornerstone of many probation companies’ business.
Offenders on pay only probation could wash their hands of the criminal justice system on
the day of their court appearance if only they had the money on hand to pay their fines and
court costs immediately and in full. Because they can’t, they are put on probation for
periods of up to several years while they gradually pay down their debts to the court. Each
month, they are charged an additional “supervision fee” by their probation company,
whose only task is to collect their money and monitor whether they are keeping up with
scheduled payments.
The central problem with offender-funded, pay only probation is this: the longer it takes
offenders to pay off their debts, the longer they remain on probation and the more they pay
in supervision fees. In other words, the poorer a person is the more they ultimately pay and
the longer they have to live with the threat of possible incarceration hanging over their
heads. Some low-income offenders end up paying more in fees to their probation company
than they were sentenced to pay in fines to begin with. Those fees are costs an offender of
greater economic means could avoid altogether.

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Most courts do not even track and do not know how much their probation companies
collect in fees from the probationers they assign to them. Companies treat those figures as
a trade secret and refuse to publish them. Human Rights Watch estimates that in Georgia
alone, probation companies take in at least $40 million in revenues from fees they charge
to probationers.
In other cases, offenders are on private probation where a court believes the offender
requires supervision and imposes substantive conditions of probation. Arguments rage as
to whether it is appropriate to privatize probation at all. But in these cases, at least the
sentence of probation itself is undoubtedly legitimate as there are clear and compelling
policy reasons for imposing it apart from inability to pay.
Human Rights Watch takes no position on the broader issue of privatization—and some
publicly run probation programs have seen their fair share of abuses. But government
oversight and transparency are especially crucial where private companies are hired to
provide probation services. The absence of that oversight has given rise to serious
allegations of abusive practices leveled against leading probation firms like Sentinel
Offender Services and Judicial Correction Services.
Many probation company officials argue that whether accurate or not, allegations of
abusive behavior are inappropriately laid at their doorstep. They contend that all coercive
power lies with the courts and that their employees do nothing more than faithfully
execute the commands of the judges they work with. This is all true in theory, and a large
share of the blame for all of the problems described in this report does lie squarely with
the courts. But it is also true that the day-to-day reality of privatized probation sees many
courts delegate a great deal of responsibility, discretion and coercive power—sometimes
inappropriately—to their probation companies. And there is little meaningful government
oversight of the industry in most states where it exists.
In the 1983 case Bearden v. Georgia, the US Supreme Court ruled that a probationer cannot
have their probation revoked and be jailed simply for failing to pay a fine if they truly
cannot afford to pay it. But many courts do not bother to make any determination as to
whether an offender is able to pay the fines, court costs and probation fees they have been
sentenced to. This problem is compounded by the fact that many misdemeanor offenders

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have no legal representation, are broadly unaware of their rights and see their cases
disposed of by the court in just one or two minutes.
Instead of taking it on themselves, many courts delegate the task of determining whether
an offender possesses the financial means to pay their fines and probation fees to a
probation officer. When that probation officer is the employee of a private company, this
creates a direct conflict of interest. A probation company’s revenues are entirely derived
from the fees probationers pay them, so waiving those fees negatively impacts companies’
financial bottom line. Companies’ financial interests are often best served by using the
threat of imprisonment to squeeze probationers and their families as hard as possible to
pay as much as they can, no matter how severe a hardship this imposes. It is by no means
the case that all company probation officers engage in such practices, but financial
incentives push them in that direction. They are exactly the wrong people to task with
determining whether an offender is able to pay.
This report includes stories of probationers who say their company probation officers
responded with overt hostility and threats when they attempted to explain that they could
not afford to keep up with payments. In Augusta, Georgia numerous former probationers
accuse Sentinel Offender Services of ignoring their inability to pay hundreds and even
thousands of dollars in company fees. Probationers allege that company employees
instead squeezed them as hard as they could for as much as they could get before turning
to the courts to secure their arrest when they stopped paying.
Just as troubling, many judges ask probation companies rather than their own clerks to
prepare arrest warrants for probationers whom the companies allege have violated the
terms of their probation. Those warrants require a judge’s signature but some judges do
not bother to inquire into the facts around a probationer’s alleged violation. One judge
acknowledged to Human Rights Watch that he does not even have time to scrutinize
warrants and other company-prepared orders before signing them.
Abuses can and do flow from such de facto delegations of power to probation companies.
Human Rights Watch interviewed one probation officer with a medium-sized Georgia firm
who explained how she regularly obtains the arrest of offenders who fall behind on their
payments. She then approaches their families to negotiate for what she calls “good faith
money”—a partial payment on the offender’s arrears—in order to secure the person’s
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release. She tells family members quite bluntly that it is up to them whether their son,
daughter or spouse comes home that night or spends the week in jail awaiting a probation
revocation hearing that could land him or her behind bars for weeks or months. Some
judges may condone such practices. Others may simply be asleep at the wheel.
Leading officials with Judicial Correction Services and Sentinel Offender Services—the two
large probation companies that feature most prominently in this report—expressed zero
tolerance for the alleged abuses described in this report. Yet some of the most serious
allegations documented by Human Rights Watch involve their employees.
Probation companies have a clear responsibility to prevent abuse by their employees and
to remedy any abuses that do occur. But the responsibility for all of the abusive practices
described in this report lies just as much with courts and other public officials as it does
with any probation company. Too often, courts that work with private probation companies
exercise no meaningful oversight over their activities. And some officials may be tempted
to judge their probation companies exclusively by the size of the checks they cut to the
court rather than on whether they respect the fundamental rights of all concerned.
Human Rights Watch believes that the patterns of abuse described in this report are
inevitable without strong government oversight of probation companies. It lays out
recommendations on how courts and state governments as well as probation companies
themselves can better live up to their key responsibilities. Fundamentally, it also argues
that public officials must accept that living up to their oversight responsibilities means
dedicating public resources to that task and not viewing probation companies as a costfree source of cash.

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Recommendations
To State Governments where Privatized Misdemeanor Probation is Permitted
•

Pass legislation that prohibits courts from imposing supervision fees in pay only
probation cases. Mandate that probation must terminate early in pay only cases
upon full payment of all fines and costs owed.

•

Encourage courts to explore alternatives to probation in these cases, such as
having low-risk offenders make regular payments through court clerks as a way of
collecting fines, court costs and restitution over a longer term.

•

Pass legislation that prohibits courts from outsourcing determinations of whether
an offender has the means to pay their fines, costs and probation fees to a
probation company.

•

Collect and publish data at a court-by-court level that details:
o

How much money probation companies collect in fees from the offenders
they supervise;

o

How much money probation companies collect in fines, costs and
restitution for the court;

o

How many arrest warrants are issued for alleged probation violations and
for what cause; and

o
•

How many probationers have their probation revoked and for what cause.

Establish clear regulatory frameworks governing the operation of private probation
services with an emphasis on transparency and on safeguarding the rights of
probationers. Set clear, reasonable minimum professional qualifications for private
probation company staff.

•

Establish robust oversight mechanisms, possibly modeled on Georgia’s regulatory
framework but with the following enhancements:
o

A mandate to carry out unannounced inspections of probation company
operations at the court level;

o

A mandate to include interviews with probationers as part of the
compliance review process;

o

A mandate to publish in full the reports from all inspections and regular
compliance reviews;

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o

Sufficient professional staff to conduct scheduled compliance reviews and
surprise inspections with frequency and rigor;

o

An emphasis on determining whether courts and probation companies are
acting in full compliance with probationers’ constitutional rights as
articulated by the US Supreme Court in Bearden v. Georgia.

o

A mandate to receive and investigate confidential complaints of abusive
behavior involving private probation firms from probationers and other
members of the public.

•

In the case of Georgia, pass legislation to amend the mandate of County and
Municipal Probation Advisory Council of Georgia (CMPAC) and adequately resource
the Council along the lines of the preceding recommendations. Consider whether a
new institution with a strong investigative role is needed to complement CMPAC’s
work.

•

Pass legislation prohibiting probation company employees from approaching the
family members of probationers to solicit payments.

•

Pass legislation prohibiting courts from imposing supervision fees in pretrial
situations, or pass legislation capping these fees to ensure that defendants are not
unduly penalized for lengthy judicial delays beyond their control.

To Courts and Local Governments that Use Private Probation Companies
•

Do not require offenders on pay only probation to pay supervision fees. Consider
alternatives to probation in dealing with offenders as a means of collecting
payments from offenders’ long-term payment plans.

•

Ensure that all determinations of whether an offender has the ability to pay any
fines, costs and probation fees lie with officials of the court, not probation
company employees. Dedicate sufficient staff to ensure rigorous and proactive
performance of this duty.

•

Ensure that any arrest warrants prepared by company probation officers for alleged
probation violations are thoroughly vetted by the court before being issued.

•

To the extent not already provided for by state law, collect and publish data that
details:
o

How much money probation companies collect in fees from the offenders
they supervise;

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o

How much money probation companies collect in fines, costs and
restitution for the court;

o

How many arrest warrants are issued for alleged probation violations and
for what cause; and

o

How many probationers have their probation revoked and for what cause;
and

•

Establish channels for probationers to complain about any alleged abuses by
probation company employees and ensure that these are made explicitly known to
all probationers at the time of sentencing.

To Probation Companies
•

Immediately publish, at a court-by-court and company-wide level, data that details:
o

How much money the company collects in fees in a year from the offenders
they supervise;

o

How much money the company collects in fines, costs and restitution for
each court each year;

o

How many arrest warrants are issued each year for alleged probation
violations by the company’s probationers, and for what cause; and

o

How many of the company’s probationers have had their probation revoked,
when, and for what cause.

•

Establish or bolster effective internal oversight mechanisms specifically geared
towards preventing and addressing allegations of abusive behavior towards
probationers by company employees.

•

Where these do not exist already, establish and publicize confidential channels
probationers can use to complain about alleged abuses by company employees
without fear of reprisal.

•

Include on all receipts issued to probationers under company supervision the total
amount the probationer has paid in supervision and other company probation fees
to date, and indicate what part of any arrearage consists of company probation
fees.

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Methodology
This report is based largely on more than 75 interviews conducted during the second half
of 2013 with people in three US states: Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi. Georgia was
selected because the state’s courts put more people on probation with private companies
than any other state. It also has a more advanced regulatory and oversight model than any
other state that permits privatized probation services. Mississippi was selected because
leading probation firms have aggressively expanded into new markets there recently, and
there has been no independent scrutiny of industry practices there prior to this report.
Alabama, where less research was conducted than in Georgia and Mississippi, was
selected because of a combination of a strong industry presence, weak state government
oversight, and serious allegations of abuse related to privatized probation services.
The vast majority of the interviews for this report were done in person and the remainder
by phone. Interviewees included misdemeanor offenders sentenced to probation with
private companies; judges; court clerks and other court officials; probation company
officials; probation officers employed by private firms and publicly run probation services;
public defenders; prosecuting attorneys; former state regulatory officials; attorneys who
have brought civil suits against probation companies and the municipalities or counties
that use them in Alabama and Georgia; local elected officials; and others. The identity of
some interviewees—primarily probationers and probation company employees—has been
withheld at their request or at Human Rights Watch’s discretion in order to protect them
from any possible reprisals.
Human Rights Watch sent a written questionnaire to roughly a dozen probation firms
including the leading firms present in Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi, and all of the
probation companies mentioned in this report. None of those companies responded in
writing but several firms subsequently agreed to a meeting organized under the auspices
of the Private Probation Association of Georgia. That meeting took place in Tucker, Georgia
on October 10, 2013. The firms in attendance were Sentinel Offender Services, Judicial
Correction Services, Southeast Corrections, AD Probation, Georgia Probation Services and
CSRA Probation. For about four hours, representatives of these companies engaged Human
Rights Watch in an open and wide-ranging dialogue concerning the alleged patterns of

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abuse described in this report as well as a number of other issues. Human Rights Watch
has also had email correspondence with some of the same company officials.
Human Rights Watch visited more than two dozen county and municipal level courts. In
many of those courts, we were able to observe cases where misdemeanor offenders were
sentenced to probation with private firms. Where available, we collected court documents
and records issued to probationers by their probation companies to verify details relating
to individual cases. We also obtained information though Open Records Act requests filed
in Georgia and Mississippi with local courts and with the Municipal and County Probation
Advisory Council of Georgia (CMPAC). This report is also grounded in an extensive review of
existing literature and media coverage of issues related to privatized probation and
probation fees more generally.
No compensation of any kind was offered or requested for any interviews. All interviewees
were clearly informed about the nature of our research and made to understand that they
were free to end the interviews at any time.

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I. Background: Why Privatize Probation Services?
Probation in Misdemeanor Cases
When a court sentences a criminal offender to probation, it conditionally suspends part or
all of the punishment it would otherwise impose. Typically, an offender who would
otherwise serve time behind bars is instead conditionally released for a fixed period of
time. During his or her term of probation, an offender meets regularly with a probation
officer and is required to demonstrate adherence to court-mandated benchmarks of good
behavior. Courts can revoke the probation of an offender who fails to comply with all
mandated conditions and reinstate the sentence probation was intended to replace.
Probation is widely used in misdemeanor cases, which typically involve relatively minor
offenses. In these cases probation can give courts the flexibility they need to deal with
low-level offenders who simply do not belong behind bars. But in an era of shrinking
public budgets, many US states have stopped providing misdemeanor probation services
in order to focus scarce resources on felony probationers.1 In theory, misdemeanor
probation supervision then falls to county and municipal governments. But in reality many
local governments and courts lack the financial and institutional resources to set up
effective probation services. In these situations local courts can lose probation as a viable
sentencing option in misdemeanor cases. As Tony Moreland of the private firm Georgia
Probation Services put it in an interview with Human Rights Watch, courts are then left with
just two options: “put ‘em in jail or let them go.”2
The for-profit probation industry has thrived as a direct response to these realities and now
has roots in more than a dozen US states.3 The industry’s growth also reflects broader
ideological trends in favor of privatization in some parts of the country.4
1 This includes all of the states researched for this report as well as all others where the private probation industry exists. See
Christine Schloss and Lianne Alaird, “Standards in the Privatization of Probation Services: A Statutory Analysis,” noting that
“state budgets have not been able to keep pace with the burgeoning probation populations and clients currently on
community supervision. Christine Schloss and Lianne Alaird, “Standards in the Privatization of Probation Services: A
Statutory Analysis,” Criminal Justice Review, vol. 32, (2007): 233, accessed December 4, 2013,
http://www.sagepub.com/hanserstudy/articles/05/Schloss.pdf.
2 Human Rights Watch interview with probation company officials, Tucker, Georgia, October 10, 2013.
3 See below, “Scale and Economics of the Industry.” Probation companies provide offender-funded misdemeanor probation

services in Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Colorado, Utah, Washington, Missouri, Michigan, Montana
and Idaho. This is not necessarily an exhaustive list of all states where the industry exists.

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Probation companies offer to provide the misdemeanor probation services that local
governments and courts either cannot or do not want to operate themselves. Some states,
like Georgia, have passed statutory frameworks that explicitly authorize and even
encourage local governments to privatize their misdemeanor probation services.5 In other
states, like Mississippi, localities have simply read the authority to outsource
misdemeanor probation services into broader contractual powers.
Arguments persist as to whether the outsourcing of probation services is proper or wise
from a policy standpoint. Whatever one’s views on privatization per se, however, it is
important to understand that many probation companies are not exclusively or even
primarily selling probation supervision services in the traditional sense—that is,
supervised release as a substitute for prison time. What many of them are really selling—
and what many courts are really in the market for—is a particularly robust form of debt
collection that can be billed to the debtors themselves.

Financial Pressures on Local Courts and Low-Income Offenders
Many local governments across the US are starved for revenue.6 One result is that some
localities expect their criminal courts to fund most or even all of their own operations with
fines and fees extracted from defendants and offenders. Some local governments go
further, expecting their criminal courts to earn a profit and serve as key sources of public
revenue.7 The obvious danger in all of this lies in the possibility that some courts come to

4 For example, Municipal Court Judge Jim Wilbanks of Dalton, Georgia explained his support for privatizing his court’s publicly
run probation service this way: “I don’t think the government should be in competition with private business.” “Council to
consider privatizing Municipal Court probation,” Dalton Daily Citizen, February 19, 2011,
http://www.inthepublicinterest.org/article/council-consider-privatizing-municipal-court-probation (accessed December 4, 2013).
5 See, for example, OGCA 42-8-100; Montana Code 46-23-1005(2); KY 533.010(12).
6 In 2013, Detroit filed the biggest municipal bankruptcy case in US history. Monica Davey and Mary Williams Walsh, “Billions

in Debt, Detroit Tumbles into Insolvency,” New York Times, July 18, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/19/us/detroitfiles-for-bankruptcy.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 (accessed January 24, 2014). See also, Elena Moya, “$2tn Debt Crisis
Threatens to Bring Down 100 US Cities,” The Guardian, December 20, 2010,
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2010/dec/20/debt-crisis-threatens-us-cities (accessed January 6, 2014); Mark
Funkhauser, “Counties and the Revenue Crisis that Won’t Go Away,” May 7, 2012, http://www.governing.com/govinstitute/funkhouser/col-counties-structural-revenue-problem-property-tax.html (accessed January 6, 2014).
7 See, for example, Paul LaCommare, “Generating New Revenue Streams,” The Police Chief, June 2010,

http://www.policechiefmagazine.org/magazine/index.cfm?fuseaction=display&article_id=2108 (accessed January 23, 2010);
Rebekah Diller, “Court Fees As Revenue?” USA Today, July 30, 2008, http://www.brennancenter.org/analysis/court-feesrevenue (accessed January 23, 2014); John Schwartz, “Pinched Courts Push to Collect Fees and Fines,” New York Times, April
6, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/07/us/07collection.html (accessed January 23, 2014). For further discussion
see Rebekah Diller, “The Hidden Costs of Florida’s Criminal Justice Fees,” Brennan Center for Justice, New York University
School of Law, May 23, 2010, http://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/legacy/Justice/FloridaF&F.pdf (accessed

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focus more on harvesting money from the people who appear before them than on the
rational and humane administration of justice.
In tandem with these trends, court costs and other usage fees have proliferated and grown
to the point that they can eclipse the fines imposed as penalties for low-level offenses.
Residents of Montgomery, Alabama who violate the city’s noise ordinance face only a $20
fine for a first offense, but must also pay $257 in court costs if they choose to contest the
citation in court and lose.8 In Georgia, misdemeanor offenders face an extensive menu of
state-mandated surcharges in addition to court costs.9
Accumulated fines and costs can easily stretch into the thousands of dollars and lowincome misdemeanor offenders often struggle to pay all of what they owe.10 This problem
can be especially severe in parts of the country that suffer from poverty, job loss and
economic stagnation. In some cases these are precisely the localities where public
revenues are low and the pressure on courts to generate revenue is most acute.
All of these factors conspire to create a situation where some courts are increasingly
anxious to collect fines, costs and other fees that offenders are increasingly unable to
pay. It is common in many areas for courts to put offenders on long-term payment plans
when they cannot afford to pay all of what they owe immediately. Many poor offenders
need months or even years to pay down their debts to the court. At the same time, local
level courts often lack the institutional capacity to efficiently track whether the offenders
who owe them money are making good faith efforts to pay down outstanding debts.11
What many courts feel that they need in light of these difficulties is an efficient, cost-free
way of ensuring that offenders pay what they owe over time, and punishing those who do
not. Private probation companies market themselves as a zero cost solution to precisely
this dilemma.

January 23, 2014); Conference of State Court Administrators, “2011-2012 Policy Paper: Courts Are Not Revenue Centers,” 2011,
http://cosca.ncsc.org/~/media/Microsites/Files/COSCA/Policy%20Papers/CourtsAreNotRevenueCentersFinal.ashx(accessed January 23, 2014). Also see below, Harpersivlle, a Cautionary Tale.
8 City of Montgomery, Alabama, “Fine Schedule,” undated, http://www.montgomeryal.gov/index.aspx?page=181 (accessed

December 4, 2013).
9 Administrative Office of the Courts, Court Business and Process Improvement Program, “Court Fees in Georgia Laws and

Information,” 2004, http://www.georgiacourts.org/aoc/publications/courtfeesbook10_2004.pdf (accessed December 6, 2013).
10 Ibid. See also, American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, “The Outskirts of Hope, How Ohio’s Debtors’ Prisons Are Ruining

Lives and Costing Communities,” April 2013, http://www.acluohio.org/the-outskirts-of-hope (accessed December 4, 2013).
11 Human Rights Watch interviews with judicial officials in Georgia, Mississippi and Alabama, June-October 2013.

PROFITING FROM PROBATION

14

II. Overview of the Private Probation Industry
The “Offender-Funded” Business Model
“Offender-funded” probation offers precisely what the name implies. Under this model,
the costs of probation services are passed on to the offenders themselves through various
fees. No public money is spent directly on the provision of probation services.
In some states it is common for publicly run misdemeanor probation services to operate on
an offender-funded basis. Some states, such as Montana, statutorily require them to do
so.12 But if probation fees don’t actually cover the full costs of a publicly run probation
service, the courts or local governments that operate them must still draw on public
resources to make up the balance. Only private probation firms can offer courts a
probation service that is guaranteed to cost them nothing. Probation company revenues
from these arrangements consist entirely of the fees probationers pay them, and any
profits or losses are theirs alone. The entire business of many probation companies lies in
the provision of offender-funded probation services. Some probation companies engage in
other work on a contractual basis with government clients as well.13
In marketing themselves to courts and local governments, probation companies are not
shy about acknowledging the central importance of financial returns as opposed to
traditional notions of probation supervision. Leading company Judicial Correction Services
(JCS) advertises on its website that:
Supervision is completely offender-funded. This means your tax dollars are
not going to support the probation office.… Court collections have
increased in every community that has made the transition to JCS. This
helps fund the court itself.14

12 See, for example, Montana Code Annotated 43-23-1005 (3).
13 See below, Major Players, and The Crushing Costs of Other Probation Company Fees and Services
14 Judicial Correction Services, “For the Community,” undated, http://judicialservices.com/what-we-provide/for-the-

community/ (accessed December 4, 2013).

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HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH | FEBRUARY 2014

Sentinel Offender Services boasts that since 1992 its offender-funded programs have
saved public agencies “hundreds upon hundreds of millions of dollars.”15
Courts that use private probation companies include a condition in probationers’
sentences requiring them to pay all fees the company is entitled to levy against them in full.
Failing to pay a probation company its money thus becomes a violation of probation
conditions just as serious as failing to pay court-ordered fines. As this report shows, in
practice if not in theory, the privatization of probation often means delegating a significant
amount of the courts’ coercive power to probation companies as well.

Scale and Economics of the Industry
Hundreds of thousands of Americans are sentenced to probation with private companies
every year by well over 1,000 courts across the US. In Georgia, a state of less than 10
million people, 648 courts assigned more than 250,000 cases to private probation
companies in 2012.16 In Tennessee, probation companies supervised a minimum of 50,000
offenders that year, and probably at least 80,000.17 Probation companies in Alabama work
with well over 100 courts across the state.18 And in Mississippi, leading firm Judicial
Correction Services expanded aggressively into new markets in the Mississippi Delta
region, including some of the poorest counties in the country, before abruptly pulling out
of the state altogether in December 2013.19 The industry also has deep roots in Florida, the
first state to allow privatized probation services, and a significant presence in courts
across at least a dozen states all told.20 The most robust markets for offender-funded

15 Sentinel Probation Services, “Probation & Court Services,” undated, http://sentrak.com/probation_and_court/ (accessed

December 4, 2013).
16 Data from Open Records Request to Georgia’s County and Municipal Probation Advisory Council (CMPAC), on file with

Human Rights Watch.
17 Tennessee’s Private Probation Services Council does not track these figures, but does require each probation company

active in the state to pay it a $1 quarterly fee for each probationer on their rolls. Companies paid $149,284 during the first
three quarters of 2013. The figure of 80,000 probationers assumes only a modest degree of turnover during that period; the
figure of 50,000 assumes no turnover at all. Private Probation Services Council, “FAQs - Frequently Asked Questions,”
undated, http://www.tn.gov/regboards/privatepro/FAQ.shtml (accessed January 27, 2014).
18 Judicial Correction Services alone works in about 100 Alabama courts. Other companies also operate across the state but

not at anything near the scale of JCS’ operations. Human Rights Watch interview with probation company officials, Tucker,
Georgia, October 10, 2013.
19 Human Rights Watch interviews, Mississippi, June 2013. Also see below, Squeezing Water from a Stone.
20 Probation companies provide offender-funded misdemeanor probation services in Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama,
Mississippi, Florida, Colorado, Utah, Washington, Missouri, Michigan, Montana and Idaho. This is not necessarily an
exhaustive list of all states where the industry exists.

PROFITING FROM PROBATION

16

probation services are in the South, but states as geographically diverse as Michigan,
Montana, Utah and Washington have also embraced the industry to one degree or another.
The probation business thrives on volume. Relatively low margins on a per-offender basis
can translate into significant profits when multiplied out over large numbers of
probationers.21 For this reason, courts that sentence high volumes of offenders to
probation simply as a way of collecting fines and costs are great prizes for probation
companies and their business is the object of stiff competition. On the other hand, courts
with low volumes of offenders that make only sparing use of probation companies’
services can be a financial dead end.
At the lucrative end of the spectrum, the Dekalb county Recorder’s Court in Georgia
sentences thousands of people to probation with leading firm Judicial Correction Services
(JCS) each year, and the company probably collects over $1 million in annual revenues
from probationers in that one court alone.22 At the other extreme, the Justice Court in
Greenville, Mississippi also worked with JCS until December 2013 but sentenced only a
handful of people to probation each month. The head of JCS’ office in a nearby county said
of the company’s Greenville operation that “I really don’t know how they stay afloat.”23
Often, companies address low-volume contracts by assigning one probation officer to
multiple courts across different counties, allowing for economies of scale that those
counties and municipalities could never hope to achieve on their own.24 Human Rights
Watch interviewed one company probation officer in Georgia who at any given point in time
personally “supervised” an average caseload of 600 offenders from five different courts
across multiple counties.25

21 Human Rights Watch interview with probation company officials, Tucker, Georgia, October 10, 2013.
22 See below, Financial Scale of Georgia’s Probation Industry, for an explanation of how these figures are calculated based

on company payments to the Georgia Crime Victims Emergency Fund (GCVEF). JCS collected over $564,000 in GCVEF
contributions from the court in 2012. Using the methodology outlined below, the company is entitled to collect more than $2
million in fees from probationers there. The estimate given here is therefore a conservative one, it assumes JCS actually
managed to collect less than 50 percent of that total.
23 Human Rights Watch interview with Crystal Beach, Probation Manager, Judicial Correction Services, Cleveland, Mississippi,
June 20, 2013.
24 Human Rights Watch interview with probation company officials, Tucker, Georgia, October 10, 2013.
25 Human Rights Watch interview with company probation officer [identity withheld], Georgia, July 2013.

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HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH | FEBRUARY 2014

There is virtually no transparency about the revenues of private probation companies. All or
practically all of the industry’s firms are privately held and not subject to the disclosure
requirements that bind publicly traded companies.26 No state requires probation companies
to report their revenues, or by logical extension the amount of money they collect for
themselves from probationers. Companies refuse to publicize this information voluntarily.27

Financial Scale of Georgia’s Probation Industry
The only state where it is possible to produce a plausible minimum estimate of
probation company revenues is Georgia, which is also home to the country’s
largest population of offenders on private probation. As of mid-2013, 30
probation companies worked in 648 courts across Georgia. In 2012, probation
firms collected $98.6 million in fines, court costs and restitution for those
courts, and collections continued at a similar pace through the first two
quarters of 2013.28
Like other states, Georgia does not require probation companies to report how
much they collect in fees for themselves from probationers. However, state law
requires all probationers to pay a $9 monthly fee to a Crime Victims Emergency
Fund (GCVEF) along with any probation supervision fee they pay to their
probation provider. Those fees are collected by probation companies and then
turned over to the government. Companies are required to report the amount
they collect for the GCVEF, an amount that totaled $10.1 million in 2012.29
Monthly company supervision fees average roughly $35 in Georgia. Since every
$9 of GCVEF money is attached on one distinct supervision fee payment, it is
possible to use this data to reverse engineer a rough estimate of the amount
companies collect in supervision fees from their probationers, where:

26 One leading firm, Professional Probation Services, is owned by a large publicly traded healthcare services company called

Universal Health Services (UHS). UHS does not disaggregate their probation businesses’ revenues in their public filings.
27 Human Rights Watch interview with probation company officials, Tucker, Georgia, October 10, 2013.
28 Data from Open Records Request to Georgia’s County and Municipal Probation Advisory Council (CMPAC), on file with

Human Rights Watch. During the first two quarters of 2013, probation companies collected $50 million in fines, restitution
and court costs for the courts they serve.
29 Ibid.

PROFITING FROM PROBATION

18

Total Supervision Fees = (Total GCVEF collections/$9) *$35
Using this approach, it is possible to estimate that companies collected more
than 1.1 million supervision fee payments from probationers in 2012. Assuming
an average monthly supervision fee of $35, this means that companies were

entitled to collect something on the order of $39.3 million in supervision fees.
This is almost certainly a significant overestimate of actual collections since
many financially struggling probationers make only partial payments towards
their company fees in any given month. On the other hand, the figure of $39.3
million does not include other fees companies are allowed to charge some
offenders such as fees for GPS monitoring and court-ordered drug tests, whose
total amounts are unreported and shrouded in complete secrecy.
Taking all of this together, Human Rights Watch believes that $40 million
represents a reasonable, if very rough, minimum estimate of the total annual
revenues that probation companies in Georgia collect from the people they
supervise. Several probation company executives and public officials interviewed
by Human Rights Watch agreed that this method as well as the resulting
estimates were sound.30

Major Players
The probation industry is highly decentralized and includes a large proliferation of firms.
Many are small businesses that only operate in a handful of localities.31 On the other hand,
the industry’s leading firms each operate on a large scale across scores or even hundreds
of different jurisdictions. These include Judicial Correction Services, Sentinel Offender
Services, Providence Community Corrections and several others.

30 Human Rights Watch interview with probation company officials, Tucker, Georgia, October 10, 2013; Human Rights Watch
interview with Amy Hartley, former CMPAC compliance officer and chief probation officer, Macon, Georgia, July 23, 2013; Human
Rights Watch interview with Dale Allen, Chief Probation Officer for Athens-Clarke county, Athens, Georgia, July 26, 2013.
31 Human Rights Watch interview with probation company officials, Tucker, Georgia, October 10, 2013. The head of one
relatively small Georgia probation company described his business this way: “A lot of us are not gigantic big old
conglomerates. We are technically a corporation, but it’s me and a guy I grew up with.”

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HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH | FEBRUARY 2014

The two companies that feature most prominently in this report are Sentinel Offender Services
and Judicial Correction Services. They are arguably the most significant industry players, and
they are also the two firms that have been most widely implicated in alleged abuses.

Judicial Correction Services
Judicial Correction Services is, relatively speaking, an industry giant. As of October 2013 it
operated in some 480 courts across four different states—Georgia, Alabama, Florida and
Mississippi. In late 2013 the company reportedly pulled out of Mississippi, where it had
aggressively expanded into several counties in Mississippi’s impoverished Delta region,
including some with a per capita income of under $15,000.32
At any given point in time JCSemployees are supervising approximately 38,000
probationers. JCS is headquartered in Georgia, where it works in 220 courts. It is the
dominant industry player in Alabama with a presence in at least 100 courts.
In 2011 JCS was acquired by Correctional Healthcare Companies, a privately held
corporation that also focuses on the provision of healthcare services to prisons and bills
itself as a provider of “integrated healthcare solutions” to the criminal justice system
“including inmate healthcare, outpatient treatment, mental health, behavioral
programming and treatment case management services.”33 In 2012, CHC was itself
acquired by private equity group GTCR.34

Sentinel Offender Services
Sentinel is a privately held California corporation whose physical presence is largely based
in Georgia. It is largely controlled by its founder Bob Contestabile and his son Mark
Contestabile, who heads up the company’s east coast operations. Sentinel claims to
operate in 48 US states, mostly providing GPS monitoring and other services for
government clients. The company’s offender-funded probation supervision business

32 Human Rights Watch telephone interviews with county and municipal officials, Greenwood, Mississippi, January 30, 2014;
Human Rights Watch email correspondence with probation company executive, January 30, 2014.
33 Correctional Healthcare Companies, “Total Correctional Healthcare - Medical, Mental, and Behavioral,” 2013,

http://www.jailcare.com/ (accessed December 4, 2013).
34 GTCR, “GTCR Completes Acquisition of Correctional Healthcare Companies,” December 31, 2012,

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/gtcr-completes-acquisition-of-correctional-healthcare-companies-2012-12-31 (accessed
December 4, 2013).

PROFITING FROM PROBATION

20

operates exclusively in Georgia.35 There, the company works with 80 courts and supervises
between 23,000 and 35,000 offenders at any given point in time.36 Sentinel boasts that it
has supervised more than 500,000 probationers since 1992.37
Sentinel also provides electronic monitoring and other services to government clients in
California and elsewhere. It operates a monitoring center in Irvine, California that tracks
offenders on various forms of electronic monitoring for Sentinel’s government clients as
well as its own probation business.38

35 Sentinel Offender Services, “Bios,” undated, http://www.sentrak.com/bios/ (accessed December 4, 2013). See also Jacob

Martin Glover v. Sentinel Offender Services, Inc, Superior Court of Columbia County, Georgia, No. 2012-cv-0811, Contestabile
Deposition, 2013, p. 45; Human Rights Watch interview with probation company officials, Tucker, Georgia, October 10, 2013.
36 In an October 2013 interview, Sentinel officials said the company’s current caseload was around 23,000 probationers.
Human Rights Watch interview with probation company officials, Tucker, Georgia, October 10, 2013. On the company’s
website it gives the typical figure as 35,00. Sentinel Offender Services, “Bios,” undated, http://www.sentrak.com/bios/
(accessed December 4, 2013).
37 Sentinel Offender Services, “Probation & Court Services,” undated, http://sentrak.com/probation_and_court/ (accessed

December 4, 2013).
38 Ibid.

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III. Probation Fees, Financial Hardship, and the Poor
Probation companies and the public officials who hire them cast offender-funded
probation as a tax-free way to provide probation services. This is somewhat disingenuous.
In reality, the offender-funded model simply shifts the entire financial burden of paying for
probation services onto one very specific group of taxpayers: probationers themselves. As
the following pages describe, for many offenders that burden can be crushingly punitive. In
some cases, it is impossible for them to shoulder.

Never-ending Probation
Sitting on the porch of his modest home in Childersburg, Alabama, Elvis Mann explained
that he had been struggling for more than seven years to pay off $8,928 in accumulated
fines and costs he owed the town’s Municipal Court for several misdemeanor offenses.
He had been on probation with Judicial Correction Services since 2006 when he was
fined for two traffic violations. Elvis, 55, said his entire monthly income consists of $800
in disability benefits and about $300 in food stamps. His wife Rita had been without work
since being laid off in 2012. The couple’s estimated annual income of roughly $13,200
puts them significantly below the federal poverty line.39
Elvis was no deadbeat. He worked diligently to pay down his debt little by little over the
years. He produced JCS-issued receipts showing that in a typical month he might
scrape together a payment of between $50 and $100. All told, he had paid off more
than $6,500, but this still left him owing more than $2,400 to the court.
Elvis said that a few months before Human Rights Watch interviewed him, he had given
up and stopped paying. He said he and Rita had been struggling to make ends meet
since she lost her job and that neither JCS nor the court seemed to care that he could
not afford to pay. He had stopped reporting to his JCS probation officer and had missed
at least one court appearance, explaining that:

39 The 2013 Federal Poverty Level (FPL) guideline for the annual income of a two-person household is $15,510. US Department
of Health and Human Services, “2013 Federal Poverty Guidelines by Family Size,” 2013,
http://www.dhs.ri.gov/Portals/0/Uploads/Documents/Public/General%20DHS/FPL.pdf (accessed December 5, 2013).

PROFITING FROM PROBATION

22

These people at JCS don’t want to hear it.… They gonna tell you, you got
to come up with that money one way or another or you going to jail.
They don’t want to hear why you can’t pay. I know if I go to court they
are going to carry me off to jail, so I don’t go.40
These fears were not baseless. Several years ago, Elvis was summoned to court for falling
behind on his payments and the judge told him that he would revoke his probation and
send him to prison unless he came up with $500 by the end of the day. Rita spent the
afternoon frantically begging and borrowing money from members of their church
congregation and managed—just barely—to bring her husband home that night.
Elvis didn’t know how much he has paid in JCS fees over the years—the receipts the
company gives him each month conspicuously omit that total. But Elvis’ incomplete
records show that often, only half of the money he brought to the JCS office would be
applied towards his debt to the court. The company put the rest towards its own
monthly fees, which were also in arrears. The $40 fee the company was entitled to
collect from him every month would add up to more than $3,000 during the time he had
spent on probation with them if paid in full—more than enough to pay off his entire
remaining debt to the court.41

Supervision Fees
Probation companies charge all probationers flat monthly supervision fees, and courts are
contractually obligated to sentence all probationers to pay these fees.42 Supervision fees are
the financial cornerstone of the private probation business.43 Rates, which are generally
determined on a contractual basis between a court and its probation company, vary

40 Human Rights Watch interview with Elvis Mann, Childersburg, Alabama, October 8, 2013.
41 Ibid; Elvis Mann’s JCS payment receipts, on file with Human Rights Watch.
42 For example, Sentinel’s contract with Richmond county stated: “In consideration of the probation or monitoring services

provided by Sentinel the Court agrees that each sentence shall provide for a probation or monitoring fee payable directly to
Sentinel.” Sentinel Offender Services Contract with Richmond county Superior Court, art. 3, para. 1, on file with Human Rights
Watch.
43 These are the only fees companies collect in every case assigned

to them regardless of the conditions of probation. In a
2013 deposition, Sentinel official Mark Contestabile confirmed that supervision fees represent the company’s largest single
source of revenue from probation cases. Jacob Martin Glover v. Sentinel Offender Services, Inc, Superior Court of Columbia
County, Georgia, No. 2012-cv-0811, Contestabile Deposition, 2013, p. 45.

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HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH | FEBRUARY 2014

considerably from state to state. As of October 2013, company supervision fees across
Georgia averaged around $35 per month and $40 across much of Alabama and Mississippi.44
In Montana the rates reach as high as $100 per month for basic supervision.45
To many outside observers, a $35 monthly supervision fee might sound trivial. But as
discussed below, many probationers are only on probation to begin with because they
could not come up with a few hundred dollars to pay off their fines immediately at
sentencing. For many offenders struggling with poverty and unemployment, supervision
fees are a substantial burden.46
The larger issue is the way supervision fees can accumulate over time into sums that
would present a real hardship even to people of greater financial means. In some cases,
accumulated supervision fees can equal or surpass the fines offenders were sentenced to
pay by the court. In Mississippi, court clerks showed Human Rights Watch records for
offenders who had been sentenced to pay down fines in the region of $1,000 over a period
of 24 months on pay only probation with JCS.47 At $40 per month that adds up to $960 in
supervision fees, almost doubling the original fine.
In Sandersville, Georgia, Human Rights Watch interviewed Van Houston, a 64-year-old
Vietnam veteran on the day he was sentenced to 24 months’ probation for a driving under
the influence (DUI) offense. An admitted alcoholic on the verge of entering a residential
treatment facility, Houston said that his only income was a monthly $599 social security
check, or about $7,200 annually. The court sentenced him to $4,500 in fines and other costs
not including probation fees of $40 per month payable to a private firm called Providence
Community Corrections.48 His required monthly payments came in at $216 per month, more
than a third of his meager income—with almost 20 percent of each payment going to

44 Human Rights Watch interview with company officials; probation company receipts and other documents on file with

Human Rights Watch.
45 “Investigation into Mountain Peaks, Inc. Brings Forth Interesting Facts,” Montana News Association, March 1, 2007,

http://www.montanasnews.tv/articles.php?mode=comments&id=7109 (accessed December 4, 2013).
46 See Ethan Bronner, “Poor Land in Jail as Companies Add Huge Fees for Probation,” New York Times, July 2, 2012,

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/03/us/probation-fees-multiply-as-companies-profit.html?_r=3&pagewanted=all&
(accessed December 4, 2013).
47 Documents from Bolivar county Justice Court, on file with Human Rights Watch.
48 In Georgia, steep DUI fines are mandated by law. Courts have little discretion to reduce them according to the

circumstances of any individual case.

PROFITING FROM PROBATION

24

company fees rather than to pay down his fines. Wearing a stained white shirt and a faded
red tie to court on the day of his sentencing, Houston explained to Human Rights Watch that:
I’ll be 65 in October. When I was working I made $600 in just one week, but
now I’m getting that one week’s pay every month. Don’t let this tie and
these shoes fool you—I’ve got class but I ‘aint got money. I wish I had more
money but I’m out of time for that.49
Houston’s probation company calculated that he would owe an estimated total of $840
in supervision fees over 24 months on probation—more than 10 percent of his entire
annual income.50

“Pay Only” Probation
If you don’t have your money together you get on probation. Remember,
probation is a privilege and not a right. If you don’t meet your probation
requirements you might say, “Now what can you do about that?” Well, we
can haul you back in here and revoke your probation and put you in jail and
we will, straight up.
— Robert Wynne, Solicitor General, Sandersville, Georgia, July 2013, to
assembled criminal defendants in State Court. The court contracts with
Providence Community Corrections for probation services, July 2013.51
“Pay only” probation is used for offenders who would not be on probation at all if they had
more money. They pose no threat to public safety and require no supervision. Many are
guilty of offenses that carry no real threat of jail time such as speeding, driving without
proof of insurance, noise violations and the like. At sentencing, judges who use probation
this way ask offenders whether they can pay their fines and court costs immediately and in
full. Those that can walk free and wash their hands of the criminal justice system. Those
that can’t are put on a long-term payment plan and sentenced to probation.

49 Human Rights Watch interview with Van Houston, Sandersville, Georgia, July 22, 2013.
50 Ibid.
51 Human Rights Watch interview with Robert Wynne, Sandersville, Georgia, July 22, 2013.

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HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH | FEBRUARY 2014

Regular, timely payments are the sole substantive condition of pay only probation. Courts
generally allow pay only probationers to terminate their probation early if they are able to
pay all of what they owe the court ahead of schedule.
In other contexts, a sentence of probation is often the most humane, logical and costeffective way for a court to keep an offender out of jail. Pay only probation turns this on its
head. In these cases, the sole purpose of probation is to allow the courts a straightforward
and efficient way to jail people who do not pay their fines. It is often most common in
communities suffering from high unemployment, poverty and other forms of economic
distress. Robert Wynne, Solicitor General in Sandersville, Georgia, told Human Rights
Watch that:
When the economy got bad in 2008 or 2009 I could see it. I mean, I could

see it. More and more people on probation. They just didn’t have any
money. And this county is wealthy compared to some others.… It used to be,
probation was for more serious cases or bigger fines. But with the economy,
we’re seeing a lot more cases with smaller fines people can’t pay.52
Offender funding makes probationers pay for the “privilege” of being put on probation
instead of being imprisoned because they are unable to immediately pay their entire debt
to the court. From a legal standpoint, the logic underpinning this practice is fundamentally
untenable. The US Supreme Court has ruled that an offender cannot be jailed simply
because they lack the means to pay a fine, so there is in fact no realistic sentence to
probate in these cases at all.53 Yet each year, courts issue thousands and perhaps tens of
thousands of arrest warrants for people who allegedly fail to make timely payments to a
private probation company and many of those people are arrested. Some of these
probationers could pay but simply choose not to. Many others genuinely cannot keep up
with payments but are treated as though they have simply refused to pay.
The job of probation officers in pay only cases is not to supervise offenders. It is to
collect money, and to use the credible threat of incarceration to coerce offenders into
paying down their fines along with their probation fees. Pay only probation is essentially

52 Ibid.
53 See below, Ignoring Offenders’ Inability to Pay.

PROFITING FROM PROBATION

26

a convenient legal fiction. It allows courts to hire debt collectors who can have people put
behind bars if they don’t pay. Add private probation companies to the mix and supervision
fees in these pay only cases boil down to this: a discriminatory tax that many offenders are
required to pay precisely because they cannot afford to pay their court-ordered fines, with all
of the revenues going directly to private companies instead of public treasuries.

Supervision Fees and “Pay Only” Probation: A Tax on Poverty
In pay only probation cases, the supervision fee model is inherently discriminatory against
poor offenders and should be abolished. There are three interrelated reasons why the fees
are inherently discriminatory.
First, an offender who can afford to pay the total amount of their fine immediately does not
have to pay supervision fees at all. Those fees are charged only to offenders who lack the
present financial ability to pay their entire debt to the court.
Second, because supervision fees are set as a flat monthly rate they consume a larger
proportion of an offender’s monthly payment if that offender can only afford to pay
relatively small installments. An offender who can afford to make payments of $70 per
month sees a $35 supervision fee consume half of each monthly payment. If the same
offender could afford to pay $350 per month, the supervision fee would consume only 10
percent of each payment. The poorer probationer sees less of his payment go towards
settling the court fine, and thereby stays on probation longer. A more equitable approach
to supervision fees might see them capped at a percentage of the fines levied by the court,
but this is not how the business works.
Third, because supervision fees have no upward limit and because probation in pay only
cases generally ends once all debts to the court are settled, the fees accumulate into
higher totals for offenders who need more time to pay down their fines. In essence, the
poorer you are, the more you ultimately pay.
To illustrate the point, take the example of a court whose practice is to put any offender
who cannot pay their fine immediately and in full on pay only probation with a private firm
contracted by the court. That probation company charges supervision fees of $35 per
month and the court allows for probation to terminate early on full payment of the fine.

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HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH | FEBRUARY 2014

Consider the different fates of three hypothetical offenders who are each sentenced to pay
a $1,200 fine by this court:
•

The first offender pays the $1,200 fine in court on the day of their hearing. She goes
home that day free of any further obligations, financial or otherwise. She is not put
on probation at all and owes nothing in probation fees.

•

The second offender can afford to make monthly payments of $335. She will pay off
her fines and leave probation after four months, having paid $140 in supervision
fees and $1,340 in total.

•

The third offender can only afford to pay $85 per month. She will leave probation
after 24 months, having paid $840 in supervision fees and $2,040 in total.

The third offender pays 52 percent more than the second offender and 70 percent more
than the first—precisely because she is less able to afford it. The following graph
illustrates the same problem visually, using an initial fine of $2,000:
Figure: Estimated Cost of Fine Repayment by Monthly Payment Amount

PROFITING FROM PROBATION

28

At the extreme end of this spectrum, offenders would be financially better off taking out
loans on even the most abusive of terms. They could use that money to pay off their fines
immediately, avoid probation, and save money despite having to pay extortionate rates of
interest. An offender who requires 24 months on probation to pay off a $1,200 fine, with a
$35 monthly supervision fee, would be financially better off taking out a $1,200, 24-month
loan with an APR of 50 percent.54 She would also not have to face the direct threat of
incarceration over missed payments, as she would while on probation.
State laws generally limit the length of time an offender can be sentenced to probation for
any one offense, but offenders guilty of multiple offenses can be sentenced to consecutive
terms that leave them paying supervision fees to their probation companies for many
years.55 Some courts and probation company officials argue that this is beneficial to
offenders because it gives them more time to pay down accumulated fines that they might
struggle to pay on a shorter time frame.56 But it also increases the total amount of an
offender’s debt over time, along with the amount of revenue flowing to probation companies.
It is important to note that many judges reject the routine use of offender-funded probation
as a debt collection tool—even in courts that contract with private probation firms. For
example, Judge Laverne Simpson in Greenville, Mississippi sits on the bench of a Justice
Court that contracted with JCS as of June 2013. Yet she told Human Rights Watch that:
Putting people on probation is not something I would do hastily.… If it’s a
really high fine—or if it’s already a hardship situation—I’m not going to
put an additional hardship by putting you on probation because then you
have to pay them as well as us. I wouldn’t dare do that. You can’t just say,
“I need to collect this fine,” you have to look at this person’s
circumstances. Just because they have incurred a fine does not mean they
have no other obligations. They have utilities. They have kids. They have
food they need to buy. 57

54 In this example, the offender on probation would pay $840 in supervision fees over 24 months. The offender who took out
a loan at 50 percent interest to pay the fine immediately would pay $721 in interest over the two year term of the loan.
55 Mississippi sets the maximum at two years, and Georgia sets it at 12 months. Other states limit the term of probation in

misdemeanor cases to the length of the prison term the offender could otherwise be sentenced to.
56 Human Rights Watch interview with company probation officers, Tucker, Georgia, October 10, 2013.
57 Human Rights Watch interview with Justice Court Judge Laverne Simpson, Greenville, Mississippi, June 19, 2013.

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Judge Simpson estimated that she had sentenced no more than 10 people to probation
with JCS between 2010 and 2013. “At one of these judges’ conventions [a JCS
representative] did say to me that they need more business from us—it was just something
in passing, like in the hallway,” she recalled. “But I am not going to sentence someone to
their business just because they need to make more money.”58 Judge Simpson said that in
most cases where offenders are on long-term payment plans, she sees no need for a
sentence of probation—she simply has her clerks track whether those offenders are
keeping up with payments and brings them back into court if they are not. 59

Squeezing Water from a Stone
The Mississippi Delta town of Greenwood has 15,000 residents and a per capita
income of just $14,000. The local Municipal and Justice Courts began working with JCS
in early 2013. By August, the town’s Municipal Court had more than 1,200 offenders on
probation with the company. According to court records, a large proportion of those
probationers were guilty of traffic offenses.60
By June 2013, JCS’ supervision fees had elicited widespread discontent. Speaking to a
Human Rights Watch researcher, the police officer posted outside the municipal
courtroom door one summer morning grumbled, “Our judge puts everyone on
probation now. Everyone. We get a lot of complaints.”61
During the first eight months of 2013, JCS collected an average of $21,500 per month
in fines for the court. The company does not disclose what it manages to collect for
itself in supervision fees, but with supervision fees set at $40 and a population of
1,200 offenders JCS would have been entitled to collect nearly $48,000 a month.
Clearly, however, many offenders were unable to pay. As of August 2013, 295 JCS
probationers—almost 25 percent of the company’s total caseload—had warrants out
for their arrest.62

58 Ibid.
59 Ibid.
60 Docket records from Greenwood Municipal Court, on file with Human Rights Watch; Human Rights Watch interview with
Felicia Bedell, Municipal Court clerk, Mississippi, June 18, 2013.
61 Human Rights Watch interview, Greenwood, Mississippi, June 17, 2013.
62 JCS Activity Report, January 1, 2013-August 27, 2013,

PROFITING FROM PROBATION

on file with Human Rights Watch.

30

Wayne Self is a member of the Board of Supervisors for Leflore county, which includes
Greenwood. In 2013 he launched a bid to persuade the Board to rescind JCS’ contract
with the county’s Justice Court, citing the economic hardship probation fees had imposed
on his constituents:
Economically they are doing pretty rough. Some are supporting a whole
family on $15,000 a year. There are a lot of single parent families.
Unemployment is high. You got ‘em out there looking for jobs but the
jobs aren’t there. $40 a month is hard on a lot of people here. Some
people might have to decide on not purchasing medication or some kind
of household necessity.”63
He added that he was opposed to the JCS contract because “I felt like you are just making a
job for these people off the backs of the poor people.” 64 Records obtained from
Greenwood’s Municipal Court via an Open Records Act request show that many of the 1,200
offenders on probation had been making payments of only $5 or even $10 at a time.65
In a move that was not binding on the municipal court, in January 2014 the Board of
Supervisors voted 4-1 to cancel its contract with JCS.66 Sam Abraham, the local
chancery clerk and a member of the Board of Supervisors, told Human Rights Watch
that “The Board felt that they were charging more than people could afford. We had
numerous complaints.” He added, “I wish we had done something sooner.”67
The move was largely symbolic. JCS had reportedly sold off its Mississippi operations to
another firm and pulled out of the state altogether in late 2013.68 In January 2014, the
Greenwood Municipal court responded by signing a contract with a new probation company,
Professional Probation Services. It remains to be seen whether anything will change.

63 Human Rights Watch interview with Wayne Self, Greenwood, Mississippi, June 17, 2013.
64 Ibid.
65 JCS Activity Report, on file with Human Rights Watch.
66 “Leflore County Board of Supervisors Fires Company that Collected Fines,” AP, January 30, 2014,

http://www.clarionledger.com/viewart/20140130/NEWS/301300060/Leflore-Co-Board-Supervisors-fires-companycollected-fines (accessed January 30, 2014).
67 Human Rights Watch telephone interview with Sam Abraham, Chancery Clerk, Greenwood, January 30, 2014.
68 “Supervisors want county out of fine-collecting business,” AP, May 9, 2013,

http://msbusiness.com/blog/2013/05/09/supervisors-want-county-out-of-fine-collecting-business/ (accessed December 4, 2013).

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Pretrial Supervision Fees
Some courts use probation companies to supervise criminal defendants who are awaiting
trial. Companies typically charge the same supervision fees they do in probation cases and
defendants are required to report to their company probation officer as a condition of their
pretrial release.
This use of probation companies is troubling because it makes the freedom of people
who have not been found guilty of a crime conditional on payment of non-recoverable
fees to a private company. Courts do not always articulate a convincing rationale—or any
rationale at all—for resorting to this practice. In Jackson, Mississippi the court of Circuit
Judge Tomie Greene routinely sentences felony defendants to pretrial supervision with a
local probation company that charges them supervision fees. The court generally does
not offer any specific rationale for this in the individual case and does not even specify
what conditions of supervision should apply. Instead, it issues conditional bond orders
that simply require defendants to comply with “whatever conditions and fees” the
company might choose to impose.69
The imposition of supervision fees in these cases can also have the practical effect of
imposing financial penalties on defendants for judicial delays that are beyond their control.
As Sentinel’s branch manager in Brunswick, Georgia noted in an interview, “We’ve got
people on bond supervision two years and their case hasn’t moved.”70

The Crushing Costs of Other Probation Company Fees and Services
Outside the abusive fiction of pay only probation, supervision fees have at least some
plausible justification beyond mere debt collection. At the very least, they are arguably not
distinguishable from broader trends to charge the costs of the criminal justice system to
the defendants and offenders who are brought before it. But some of the other fees
misdemeanor offenders are required to pay in order to comply with conditions of probation
can be exorbitant in comparison with supervision fees.

69 Human Rights Watch observation of arraignments, Raymond Detention Facility, Raymond, Mississippi, June 21, 2013.
Standard form for Conditional Bond order, on file with Human Rights Watch. Judge Green’s court did not reply to requests for
comment made in writing and by phone.
70 Human Rights Watch interview with Jimmy Pitts, Brunswick Branch Manager, Sentinel Offender Services, Brunswick,

Georgia, July 24, 2013.

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Many courts require probationers sentenced to GPS monitoring, drug testing and other
conditions of probation to pay for the costs of those services. The fees involved are steep
and many low-income probationers struggle mightily to keep up. Arrears can quickly
spiral into the thousands of dollars, and offenders who fall too far behind may face
revocation of their probation and time behind bars. The fact that these already punishing
costs are padded to allow probation firms to operate at a profit is deeply troubling.

Electronic Monitoring and Alcohol Monitoring
Courts require some misdemeanor probationers to wear electronic monitoring devices to
help enforce restrictions on their movement, or alcohol monitoring devices to help enforce
restrictions on their alcohol intake. Location monitoring devices range from simple devices
that track whether an offender is in their home to Global Positioning System (GPS)
technology that can pinpoint an offender’s exact location at all times. Alcohol monitoring
devices range from home breathalyzers to anklets that continually monitor a probationer’s
blood alcohol content.71
None of this technology is cheap. Where the costs are passed on to low-income
probationers through offender funding they can be punitive on a scale that dwarfs the
other terms of their sentences. Charges typically range from $6 to $12 per day, or $180 to
$360 per month, depending on the type of monitoring being used and the fee schedules of
individual companies.72 Many companies also charge an initial “startup fee,” often in the
range of $50-$80, and some use technology that requires an offender to have a landline
telephone installed in their home.73
Sentinel says that it monitors 10,000 offenders every day through electronic monitoring and
GPS technologies.74 In general, probation companies offer no transparency about the profits
they earn through these services and public officials do not require them to provide any.
71 Sentinel Offender Services, “GSA Federal Supply Schedule Price List, September 1, 2008-August 31, 2013,” 2008,

https://www.gsaadvantage.gov/ref_text/GS07F0521U/0FOEUC.1TAK95_GS-07F-0521U_GSACONTRACT.PDF (accessed December 4, 2013).
72 Court documents, on file with Human Rights Watch; Human Rights Watch interview with probation company officials,

Tucker, Georgia, October 10, 2013.
73 Ibid.

Sentinel offers “passive tracking” devices that upload data to the company’s tracking center periodically using a
dedicated landline installed in the offender’s home. This service offers historical, but not real time, GPS tracking of
offenders’ movements and is generally used in relatively low-risk cases. Sentinel Offender Services, “Global Positioning
Satellite (GPS) Tracking” undated, http://www.sentrak.com/products_and_services.gps/ (accessed January 27, 2014).
74 Sentinel Offender Services, “GSA Federal Supply Schedule Price List September 1, 2008-August 31, 2013,”2008,

https://www.gsaadvantage.gov/ref_text/GS07F0521U/0FOEUC.1TAK95_GS-07F-0521U_GSACONTRACT.PDF (accessed December 4, 2013).

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Thomas Barrett
By the time Thomas Barrett hit rock bottom, he had lost just about everything he had
to addiction. One day in April 2012, he walked into a Georgia convenience store and
was caught stealing a $2 can of beer. He pled guilty and was sentenced to a $200 fine
and 12 months’ probation with Sentinel Offender Services. Richmond county State
Court Judge David Watkins’ sentence also required Barrett to wear an alcohol
monitoring ankle bracelet, a service administered by Sentinel.75
Barrett spent more than a month in jail because he could not afford to pay an $80
“startup fee” to Sentinel.76 Eventually, he persuaded his Alcoholics Anonymous
sponsor to give him the money and was released.
Once free, Barrett faced a rapid accumulation of monitoring fees that he had no way of
paying. He was unemployed, living in subsidized housing and subsisting largely off
food stamps. He earned his entire cash income by selling his own blood plasma.
“You can donate plasma twice a week as long as you’re physically able to,” he
explained. He could make up to $300 a month this way. “Basically what I did was, I’d
donate as much plasma as I could and I took that money and I threw it on the leg
monitor.” Still, he said, “It wasn’t enough.”77 His monitoring fees totaled some $360 a
month and he had to use some of the plasma money to pay for his own basic needs.
Barrett said that when he explained his situation to his Sentinel probation officer,
“They just said I need to pay what I could and when [the arrears] got to a certain
amount, then I’d have to go in front of the judge and they were just pretty matter of
fact about it.”78
He started skipping meals—which saved money but sometimes left him too debilitated
to donate plasma—and regularly went without household essentials like laundry
detergent and toilet paper. In spite of all these efforts, by February 2013 Barrett owed

75 Court documents, on file with Human Rights Watch.
76 Court documents, on file with Human Rights Watch.
77 Human Rights Watch telephone interview with Thomas Barrett, Augusta, Georgia, August 6, 2013
78 Ibid.

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Sentinel more than $1,000 in monitoring fees—more than five times the amount of the
fine the court had sentenced him to. The company filed a petition with the court to
revoke his probation.79
“We went back in front of the judge and well, it didn’t work out in my favor,” he said. The
judge told him he could stay out of jail if he paid several hundred dollars of what he
owed Sentinel right then and there. “And I’m thinking, ‘But the whole problem is, I don’t
have money.’ So they locked me up. And I just said, ‘Golly.’ I just felt like they kept
putting me behind the eight ball.”80
Thomas Barrett’s story has a Kafkaesque twist to it. The court’s decision to put him on
alcohol monitoring in the first place served no discernible purpose because his
probation did not include a condition that he refrain from consuming alcohol. As
Augusta attorney Jack Long put it in an interview with Human Rights Watch, “He could
have sat around and drank beer all day and it would have monitored that but it would
not have been a violation of his probation.”81

Human Rights Watch documented one case in Augusta, Georgia where a court sentenced
an offender to electronic monitoring through Sentinel even though it was actually
impossible for him to comply. Quentone Moore is an ex-marine in Augusta who pled
guilty to misdemeanor battery charges and was sentenced to probation with Sentinel.
The court required him to wear an electronic monitoring bracelet that only works in
conjunction with a landline telephone. But Mr. Moore was homeless at the time, and
spent 52 days in jail simply because he had no residence where a landline telephone
could be installed.82

79 Order revoking probation with arrest clause on file with Human Rights Watch.
80 Human Rights Watch telephone interview with Thomas Barrett, Augusta, Georgia, August 6, 2013; Court documents, on file

with Human Rights Watch.
81 Court documents, on file with Human Rights Watch; Human Rights Watch telephone interview with Jack Long, Augusta,

Georgia, May 29, 2013.
82 Human Rights Watch interview with Quentone Moore, Augusta, Georgia, July 25, 2013; Court documents, on file with

Human Rights Watch. Mr. Moore became homeless as a direct result of his conviction, which barred him from having any
contact with his former partner, with whom he had been living with before. By the time Human Rights Watch interviewed him,
he had been living on the street and in homeless shelters for several months.

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Drug Testing
Mandatory drug tests—another service probation companies offer on an offender-funded
basis—are also a source of cumulative financial hardship for many offenders. Courts
order weekly drug tests as a condition of probation in some cases. Companies generally
charge offenders about $25 per test.83 An offender required to undergo weekly drug tests
over a 12 month sentence of probation must pay their probation company $1,250 per
year, excluding supervision fees.
There is no publicly available data that would make it possible to gauge how significant
a part of overall revenues drug testing make up for probation companies, but it
represents a significant income source in some localities. In Glynn county, Georgia
Providence Community Corrections (PCC) runs what the company’s local staff described
as a kind of informal pretrial diversion program for defendants facing felony drug charges.
Defendants are required to report to Providence’s office for drug testing once a week for
periods that average around 18 months and if they stay clean, charges are eventually
dropped. “I go into the bathroom and watch them piss in a cup and I test it right here,”
Providence’s lone Brunswick-based employee told Human Rights Watch.84
These cases constitute the bulk of PCC’s caseload in Glynn county. The company’s
probation officer there said that “Our money really comes from drug testing fees.” He
added that county prosecutors seem to lose track of some cases, especially where
defendants have no attorney, and that he has seen defendants who have been reporting
for mandatory drug tests for as long as five years—which would add up to a total cost of
$6,000 in drug testing fees. “Sometimes I will contact the District Attorney myself,” he
said, “or tell the defendant to contact the public defender. Because if you’re on for three
years, that’s just ridiculous.”85

83 Human Rights Watch interviews with probationers, probation company employees and public sector probation officers,

Georgia, July and October 2013.
84 A female colleague based in another PCC office comes in to administer the test to women probationers.
85 Human Rights Watch interview with Brandon Hamilton, Providence Community Corrections probation officer, Brunswick,

Georgia, July 24, 2013.

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“Moral Reconation Therapy” and Other Services
Some probation companies offer classes that offenders can be sentenced to take as a
condition of their probation. These are generally short courses taught either by company
employees or outside providers that contract with probation firms. Some companies
simply require offenders to purchase workbooks from them and then complete a short
written test at the end of the book.86
Like all other probation services offered by these firms, these classes are billed to the
offender. Classes in job skills and financial management might set an offender back $65
for a one-day course.87
Some companies offer courses that are both implausibly ambitious and quite expensive.
For example, JCS offers “Moral Reconation Therapy,” described as a “cognitive behavioral
program” for “treatment resistant offenders.” For $325, this 12-step program purports to
empower offenders with “higher stages of moral (right v. wrong) reasoning … thereby
reducing recidivism.”88 Many courts appear to sentence offenders to take these courses
purely on the basis of one paragraph course descriptions that provide little concrete
information about the content of these courses or the qualifications of their instructors.
These programs are controversial, with some probationers and company critics
questioning their utility.89 They can also add significantly to the financial burden of an
offender’s sentence of probation.

86 Human Rights Watch interview with company probation officer [name witheld], Georgia, July 2013.
87 JCS, “Guide to Program Services,” undated, http://judicialservices.com/what-we-provide/our-programs/ (accessed
December 4, 2013).
88 Ibid.
89 One court official whose judge works with JCS but does not make use of the company’s mandatory course offerings

summed up widespread criticism of probation company course offerings this way: “They tend to be expensive and from what
I can tell they tend to be bullshit.” Human Rights Watch interview with court official [identity withheld], Birmingham,
Alabama, October 2013.

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IV. Ignoring Offenders’ Inability to Pay
It’s not our fault they’re indigent and owe hundreds of dollars due to court
and probation fees. It’s not the court’s fault … It is the offender’s fault. I
don’t care whether they’re rich or whether they’re poor, they have the right
to decide whether to commit that crime or not.
— Lisa Hancock, AD Probation Services, Tucker, Georgia, October 2013.90
In the 1983 case Bearden v. Georgia the US Supreme Court ruled that a court cannot revoke
an offender’s probation for failing to pay a fine or restitution unless the court determines
that the offender’s failure to pay was willful, or that no adequate alternative forms of
punishment exist.91 To find that a defendant’s failure to pay was willful, a court must make
a determination that the individual “has willfully refused to pay the fine or restitution when
he has the resources to pay or has failed to make sufficient bona fide efforts to seek
employment or borrow money to pay.” 92 Georgia’s Court of Appeals, applying Bearden, has
held that a court cannot revoke an offender’s probation for failure to pay absent “express
or written findings as to the reasons for [the offender’s] failure to pay or as to the
inadequacy of alternative punishments.”93
All courts purport to adhere to Bearden’s dictates but this sometimes means very little in
practical terms.94 Whether by negligence or by design, some courts and probation
companies make what amounts to an end run around Bearden by simply treating all
offenders as though their failure to pay is willful.

90 Human Rights Watch interview with probation company officials, Tucker, Georgia, October 10, 2013.
91 Bearden v. Georgia, 461 U.S. 660 (1983). In Bearden, the court held that under the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection

clause, “If a state determines a fine or restitution to be the appropriate and adequate penalty for the crime, it may not
thereafter imprison a person solely because he lacked the resources to pay it.” A court may only revoke an offender’s
probation “absent evidence and findings that the defendant was somehow responsible for the failure or that alternative
forms of punishment were inadequate.” Bearden v. Georgia, 461 U.S. 660 (1983), pp. 2068-2074.
92 The court added,

“if the probationer has made all reasonable bona fide efforts to pay the fine and yet cannot do so
through no fault of his own, it is fundamentally unfair to revoke probation.” Bearden v. Georgia, citing Williams v. Illinois,
399 US 235 (1970) and Tate v. Short, 401 U.S. 395 (1971).

93 Johnson v. State. 307 Ga.App. 570 (2011).
94 See American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, “The Outskirts of Hope, How Ohio’s Debtors’ Prisons Are Ruining Lives and

Costing Communities,” April 2013, http://www.acluohio.org/the-outskirts-of-hope (accessed December 4, 2013).

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Many probationers who were jailed for failure to pay complain that the judges at their
revocation hearings flatly dismissed their claims that they were unable to come up with the
money. One Georgia probationer who was homeless and destitute at the time he was jailed
for failing to keep up with payments on his fines and probation fees described his
probation revocation hearing this way: “I said, ‘Judge, I don’t have any money.… He didn’t
believe me. But he knows best, I guess. He’s the judge.”95 In many courts, probation
revocation hearings are often disposed of in just a few minutes. There is often no
meaningful opportunity for an offender to convince the court that they are not able to pay
their fine. Few offenders are represented by legal counsel and many are entirely unaware of
the protections Bearden offers them.
There is also generally little effort made to determine whether an offender is able to pay at
the time of their sentencing. Many courts do not address the issue at all unless the
offender affirmatively raises it. In many of the courts visited by Human Rights Watch a
typical misdemeanor case occupied no more than sixty to ninety seconds of the court’s
time. In courts that use pay only probation, many offenders who plead guilty to traffic
offenses and other minor crimes are asked just one question after the fine is handed down:
“Can you pay that today?” If the answer is no, the offender is sentenced to pay only
probation and told to speak with a probation company representative.
When courts do not make the time to find out whether a probationer can afford to pay the
fines, costs and probation fees they are sentenced to, this task falls to their probation
officer. It is ultimately the responsibility of the courts and not the probation companies to
decide whether an offender is unable to pay their fines, but courts often rely on their
probation officers to bring these cases to their attention. Some probation companies sign
contracts that explicitly mark off determinations about an offender’s ability to pay as the
company’s responsibility.96
Many probation officers understand the importance of this responsibility. As Dale Allen,
the chief probation officer of the publicly run misdemeanor probation service in AthensClarke county, Georgia explained:

95 Human Rights Watch interview with former Sentinel probationer, Augusta, Georgia, July 25, 2013.
96 See, for example, Sentinel Offender Services Contract with Richmond County Superior Court, para. 16, on file with Human
Rights Watch. “If a determination is made by Sentinel that the probationer is lacking the resources to be able to make weekly
or monthly payments, every effort will be made to convert the remaining fines or costs to community service hours.”

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We’re all well aware of the Supreme Court ruling from 1983. The judges
[here] will reduce or waive supervision fees if the person is indigent. At my
level I can waive the fee if that’s the only issue. If you looked through all
my warrants you might find one or two in a year that’s for failure to pay—
and that’s because we have strong indications that it’s willful. I do a
financial analysis form with people who say they can’t pay. I find out
where they work, what their family situation is, etc. If they can’t pay we
don’t chase the money.97
In an interview with Human Rights Watch, representatives of several leading probation
companies all said that they take their obligation to determine whether offenders have the
ability to pay their fines and probation fees very seriously. JCS and other companies say
that they have procedures in place to do financial analyses of offenders who claim that
they lack the means to pay their fines. One JCS official told Human Rights Watch that:
Once they bring all their bills, we assess their situation and we bring that
before the judge and say they have proven they are in hardship and this is
someone who’s taking their probation seriously … we will ask the judge if
they can convert their fines to community service. That’s one option.98
At the same time, though, some company officials cited alarmingly superficial factors as
evidence that an offender can afford to pay whatever they were sentenced to. Dana
Philmon of JCS emphasized that, “These people aren’t always going to get what they want,
even if they bring me all their bills [and other required documentation for a financial
analysis], especially if they walk in with two cell phones and Air Jordans on their feet.”99
Another probation company official said that if an offender claims to be unable to pay their
fines but is in possession of a pack of cigarettes, a probation officer should say, “Your
perspective is skewed. You think it’s OK not to pay for your criminal offense and you’re
smoking a pack of cigarettes a day.”100 That kind of personal responsibility rhetoric may
have some visceral appeal, but an offender’s decision to buy a pack of cigarettes does not
97 Human Rights Watch interview with Dale Allen, Chief Probation Officer for Athens-Clarke county, Athens, Georgia, July 26, 2013.
98 Human Rights Watch interview with probation company officials, Tucker, Georgia, October 10, 2013.
99 Ibid.
100 Ibid.

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actually indicate anything about their ability to pay down hundreds or thousands of dollars
in fines, court costs and fees.
Such attitudes raise real questions about whether company probation officers are
making—or are even equipped to make—rigorous, good faith determinations about
offenders’ ability to pay. That problem is by no means unique to privatized probation
services. But probation companies face a unique and fundamental conflict of interest
when handling these issues that compound the broader problems with the judicial
system’s day-to-day implementation of Bearden.

“Animal Control” in Dekalb County, Georgia
On March 21, 2013 roughly 600 people were subpoenaed to appear in the Dekalb county,
Georgia Recorder’s Court. The summons they received by mail did not explain why they
were being requested to appear in court. Of the 300 people who obeyed the summons
only one had legal representation, through the office of the county’s public defender.
Unknown to them, all 300 people had been summoned to court because they had not
kept up with payments on fines and on supervision fees owed to the Court and JCS.
Human Rights Watch estimates that JCS collects over $1 million in fees every year from
Dekalb county Recorder’s Court probationers, whose caseload consists largely of trafficrelated offenses.101 The probationers were now facing revocation of their probation and
time behind bars. The cases had been appended to a docket of animal control cases and
listed on the Court’s calendar as “Animal Control.”102
The first few cases proceeded quickly. According to lawyers and one probationer who
were in the room, Judge Angela Brown called probationers forward and then turned to a
JCS employee seated next to her to ask whether there was a warrant out for the person’s
arrest. In each case, the JCS employee responded in the affirmative—though she did not
actually produce evidence of that warrant for the court. Judge Brown then told the

101 This figure is conservative estimate based on the total amount of money JCS collected and turned over to Georgia’s Crime

Victims Emergency Fund. It assumes that JCS collected less than 50 percent of the fees it was entitled to. For a detailed
discussion of how this estimate is arrived at and the logic behind it, see above, Financial Scale of Georgia’s Probation Industry.
102 Human Rights Watch interviews with attorneys, Decatur, Georgia, October 9, 2013.

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probationer the total amount they allegedly owed in fines and JCS fees and asked whether
they could pay that amount immediately and in full. Whenever a probationer said that they
could not, Judge Brown ordered their arrest. The witnesses interviewed by Human Rights
Watch emphasized that no offender had an opportunity to explain why they had not paid
and the judge made no inquiries aimed at determining whether that failure was willful. Most
cases were disposed of in under a minute.
As the hundreds of people assembled in the courtroom realized why they were there, and
that they faced jail time if they couldn’t pay what the judge said they owed that very
morning, many stood up and scrambled towards the exits. “It kind of became chaos very
quick,” one witness recalled.103 But Judge Brown ordered her deputies to man the doors to
the courtroom and prevent anyone from leaving. The session continued.
All told, some 60 probationers on the “Animal Control” docket reportedly went to jail that
day for want of money.104

Conflicts of Interest
Under the best of circumstances, it is not necessarily an easy matter to determine whether
an offender is being truthful in asserting that they lack the means to pay a fine or
probation fees. A rigorous, objective financial analysis is generally required to assess the
credibility of these claims. But when courts delegate the burden of identifying offenders
who are unable to pay their fines, costs, and supervision fees to employees of a private
probation company, it presents a direct conflict of interest.
Probation companies’ contracts often stipulate that they will supervise indigent offenders
free of charge.105 This means that at best, offenders who are determined to be unable to
pay their probation fees represent a loss of potential revenues. Probationers with
substantive conditions of probation require company time and resources to oversee and
represent an unrecoverable cost if they are unable to pay their probation fees.

103 Human Rights Watch telephone interview with former JCS probationer, Dekalb county, Georgia, November 2013.
104 Human Rights Watch interviews with attorneys, Decatur, Georgia, October 9, 2013. Human Rights Watch telephone

interview with former JCS probationer, Dekalb county, Georgia, November 2013.
105 JCS and Sentinel contracts, on file with Human Rights Watch.

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This inherent conflict of interest is compounded when companies offer financial bonuses
to probation officers and local office supervisors based on the amount they are able to
collect in fees from probationers. These programs set specific monetary targets for fee
collections and pay out bonuses to probation officers and supervisors who meet or exceed
them.106 Some are based on whether probation officers are able to maintain consistent
levels of fee collection over time.107
One problem with these incentives programs is that they reinforce already dangerous
pressures on company probation officers as well as the supervisors directly responsible for
overseeing their conduct to view fee collection as the primary focus of their jobs. One
former employee of two different probation companies told Human Rights Watch that:
I’ve seen the bulletin boards in the break room where they are trying to figure out
how much fees you collected because you want to get the bonuses. It always made
me kind of queasy. It’s kind of slimy.… It creates the perception—which might then
slide into reality—that it’s just about money. You’ve also got the fear that private
services start to look the other way on violations [of substantive probation
conditions] as long as people are paying their money.108
Fee-based incentives programs can also incentivize probation officers to engage in
inappropriately aggressive collections tactics, and put their supervisors in the position of
potentially benefitting from such abuses. Probation companies have no real control over
the size and nature of their caseloads. The number of probationers they supervise, and the
ability of those probationers to pay company fees, depends entirely on the actions of the
court. If numbers are down, the only way for a probation officer to improve their odds of
meeting a financial target is to squeeze the probationers they supervise that much harder.
In addition, some probation officers may feel quite correctly that their livelihoods depend
entirely on their ability to collect fees in excess of what it costs to employ them. This is

106 In a deposition, Sentinel official Mark Contestabile said that Sentinel employees receive bonuses if their operations
reach forecast financial targets set at the beginning of each year. Contestabile’s base annual salary is roughly $179,000, plus
an additional bonus of up to $6,000 per quarter if the company attains forecast financial targets. Jacob Martin Glover v.
Sentinel Offender Services, Inc, Superior Court of Columbia County, Georgia, No. 2012-cv-0811, Contestabile Deposition,
2013, p. 27.
107 Providence Community Corrections, Annual Report, 2008, on file with Human Rights Watch.
108 Human Rights Watch interview with former company probation officer [identity withheld], Georgia, July 2013.

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especially true in rural areas where a company may employ only one probation officer to
oversee offenders with several small Municipal or County Courts. As one probation officer
with a medium-sized firm in Georgia put it:
Things are much harder with the economy.… There’s been a big dropoff in
collections the last few years. People just can’t get jobs—there aren’t any
jobs around here anymore. Everyone wants their fees waived but that’s
what pays my bills. That’s what puts food on the table. That’s what keeps
my lights on.109

The bottom line is that probation companies should have no role in determining whether
an offender possesses the ability to pay. Yet probation companies are asked to do this
every day, against their own financial self-interest.
The problems presented by this fundamental conflict of interest are not just hypothetical.
When the system breaks down—when neither courts nor probation companies make any
serious effort to determine an offender’s ability to pay—offenders can wind up behind bars
for failing to pay money they don’t have.
In Georgia, Human Rights Watch interviewed Clifford Hayes who was arrested in January
2013 when he went to a police station to seek clearance to enter a homeless shelter.110
Hayes was homeless at the time. He was arrested on an outstanding warrant for failure to
comply with terms of probation including his failure to pay more than $2,000 in
accumulated fines and probation fees—a sum Mr. Hayes says he simply could not even
make a dent in. The fees and the arrest warrant dated back to convictions for driving under
the influence of alcohol, driving without a valid license and improper lane change he pled
guilty to in 2007.111

109 Human Rights Watch interview with company probation officer [identity withheld], Georgia, July 2013.
110 Many homeless shelters require individuals to produce police-issued documentation that they have no outstanding

warrants for their arrest before they can enter a homeless shelter for the night. In some cases, this is required by state law or
municipal ordinance.
111 Clifford Hayes Charge Sheet and Court Order, on file with Human Rights Watch. Mr. Hayes was arrested in April 2007 and

charged with DUI, failure to maintain a lane, and driving without a valid license. He was fined $900 and sentenced to 48 days
in jail as well as 35 months and 28 days probation with Sentinel. He was stopped again in July 2007 and charged with failure
to maintain a lane and driving without a valid license. He pled guilty and was fined an additional $1,000, plus 10 days in jail
and 23 months’ probation with Sentinel.

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When Human Rights Watch interviewed Hayes in July 2013 he was off the streets and
renting a room in a dilapidated house for $400 a month. He said that his entire monthly
income consisted of $700 in disability benefits. He told Human Rights Watch that the
payments he owed towards his fines and supervision fees would destroy this precarious
and hard-won stability if he tried to keep up with them—and that neither his Sentinel
probation officer nor the court had been willing to examine the truth of these assertions:
Right now, I’m struggling. That little money I got, before I get it it’s gone. I have to
go to the soup kitchen to get food. I have to go to the thrift store to get clothes. But
now that I’m getting some kind of income and have a place to live, you want me to
give you all my money and be homeless again. But I refuse to do that. I refuse to be
out on the street again. I’ve done that. I can’t do that no more.112
Clifford Hayes’ situation is far from unique. As the next section of this report describes,
some company probation officers engage in harsh and abusive collections practices,
display open contempt for offenders’ assertions that they cannot afford to keep up with
their payments, and even secure the arrest of struggling offenders as a way of shaking
them or their families down for money.

112 Human Rights Watch interview with Clifford Hayes, Augusta, Georgia, July 25, 2013.

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V. “I Hope You Have My Money”:
Abusive Collection Tactics
They [JCS] were slow at first getting those arrest warrants out so I said,
“Look, the only thing these people understand is putting their feet to the
fire.” And they did it and collections went up.
— Municipal Court clerk, Clarksville, Mississippi, June 2013.113
Some of the probationers interviewed by Human Rights Watch described their company
probation officers as professional, compassionate and helpful in the face of difficulty. But
others alleged that their company probation officers behaved like abusive debt collectors.
They described a consistent pattern of probation officers displaying a relentless, singular
focus on payment and routinely threatening to have probationers jailed when their
payments of fines and company fees fell into arrears.114 In some cases, company probation
officers have courts jail offenders in order to coerce their families into paying some of what
they owe in exchange for their freedom.
In a refrain echoed by many other interviewees, one JCS probationer in Childersburg,
Alabama complained to Human Rights Watch that when he reports to his probation officer,
“The first thing they say is, “I hope you have all my money today.” He continued:
They acting like you owe them instead of you owing the city. They ‘aint
going to ask you, “Is you working, is you doing any good,” or nothing—just,
“Give me that money.” Lots of people ‘round here paying them and they
‘aint got no jobs. I know people selling drugs and paying them every month.
They like, “Hey, I’m doing what they told me, ‘aint I?”115

113 Human Rights Watch interview with Municipal Court

clerk [identity withheld], Mississippi, June 2013.

114 See Southern Center for Human Rights, “Profiting from the Poor: A Report on Predatory Probation Companies in Georgia,”

July 2008, http://www.schr.org/files/profit_from_poor.pdf (accessed December 4, 2013), p.2. “[Companies] are not
designed to supervise people or connect them to services and jobs. Rather, they charge exorbitant monthly fees and a variety
of bullying tactics to squeeze money out of the men and women under their supervision.”
115 Human Rights Watch interview with JCS probationer [identity withheld], Childersburg, Alabama, October 2013.

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Another man on JCS probation in the same town added, “You can’t talk to them like
you grown. You have to talk to them like you a kid—‘Yes, ma’am, no ma’am.’ If you
don’t, they say, ‘I’m telling you: keep on running your mouth.’”116
Probation company executives interviewed by Human Rights Watch condemned this kind
of behavior while acknowledging that it was a problem in at least some cases. Mark
Contestabile of Sentinel said, “There’s always a chance for rudeness. We constantly talk
about respectfulness and about how it’s not your money, so don’t say ‘You owe me.’”117 But
mere rudeness is not the problem. These complaints exist alongside allegations that some
company probation officers misuse the threat of jail to squeeze offenders who fall behind
on payments, while ignoring the protestations of offenders who claim they are genuinely
unable to pay.
A lawsuit alleging abusive practices by JCS and the Municipal Court in Harpersville,
Alabama is still pending and has already led that court to being shut down altogether.118
The judge in that case has described the Harpersville/JCS operation as a “judicially
sanctioned extortion racket” and a “debtors’ prison.”119 Another case against JCS and the
nearby town of Childersburg involves similar allegations—that probationers are wrongfully
kept on probation for years at a stretch and routinely imprisoned over their inability to pay
exorbitant fines and company fees.120 JCS has called the Childersburg allegations
“baseless,” “ridiculous” and “patently false.”121
In Augusta, Georgia Sentinel probationers have filed suit alleging a broad range of abusive
practices linked to the collection of probation fees.122 The suits allege, along with other
116 Human Rights Watch interview with JCS probationer [identity withheld], Childersburg, Alabama, October 2013.
117 Human Rights Watch interview with probation company officials, Tucker, Georgia, October 10, 2013.
118 Hannah Rappleye and Lisa Riordan-Seville, “‘Cash register justice’: Private probation services face legal counterattack,” NBC

News, October 24, 2012, http://investigations.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/10/24/14653300-cash-register-justice-privateprobation-services-face-legal-counterattack (accessed December 4, 2012). Court documents, on file with Human Rights Watch.
119 See below, Harpersivlle: A Cautionary Tale.
120 JCS faces additional litigation in Alabama alleging narrower violations—that the company has unlawfully collected
probation fees in reliance on orders of probation not signed by a judge as required under Alabama law. See Foster et al. v.
Judicial Correction Services, Inc. et al., Alabama Middle District Court, No. 2:2012-cv-00724, Motion for Summary Judgment,
2012, on file with Human Rights Watch.
121 Judicial Correction Services, “Statement in Response to a Baseless Lawsuit in Childersburg, Alabama,” August 29, 2012,

http://fairprobationservices.com/content/statement-in-response-to-a-baseless-lawsuit-in-childersburg-alabama/ (accessed
December 4, 2012).
122 Complaints, on file with Human Rights Watch; Sandy Hodson, “Private probation company Sentinel hit with another civil
lawsuit,” The Augusta Chronicle, March 22, 2013, http://chronicle.augusta.com/news/crime-courts/2013-03-22/private-

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violations, that Sentinel and the Richmond county State Court routinely imprisoned
offenders who were destitute and unable to pay probation and monitoring fees. In
September 2013, Superior Court Daniel Craig granted partial summary judgment in favor of
the plaintiffs but Sentinel successfully sought temporary relief from the state Supreme
Court pending final resolution of the case.123
Sentinel has strongly rejected all of the allegations against it in the Augusta litigation,
while agreeing that local courts sentenced some probationers in violation of their basic
rights.124 Company executive Mark Contestabile insisted to Human Rights Watch that, “we
do not have a service problem there,” adding, “Not one of those people ever called
corporate [Sentinel’s offices] before they went to a lawyer.” He and officials from several
other probation companies cast the litigation as a self-interested adventure by Augusta
attorney Jack Long, who has brought the cases forward. 125
Human Rights Watch interviewed some of the plaintiffs and potential plaintiffs in the
Georgia and Alabama litigation, and some of their arduous experiences as probationers
are described in the pages below. But the more important point is that while some of the
allegations at issue in those cases are at the extreme end of the spectrum, they are not

probation-company-sentinel-hit-another-civil-lawsuit (accessed December 4, 2012). See also Hannah Rappleye and Lisa
Riordan-Seville, “‘Cash register justice’: Private probation services face legal counterattack,” NBC News, October 24, 2012,
http://investigations.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/10/24/14653300-cash-register-justice-private-probation-services-facelegal-counterattack (accessed December 4, 2012).
123 Cash et al. v Sentinel Offender Services, Superior Court of Richmond county, Order, September 16, 2013; Sandy Hodson,

“Georgia High Court Grants Sentinel Request,” Augusta Chronicle, October 24, 2013, http://chronicle.augusta.com/news/crimecourts/2013-10-24/georgia-high-court-grants-sentinel-request (accessed December 13, 2013). See also Sandy Hodson, “Judges
say probation restraining order crippling their court,” The Augusta Chronicle, April 30, 2013,
http://chronicle.augusta.com/news/crime-courts/2013-04-30/judges-say-probation-restraining-order-crippling-their-court
(accessed December 4, 2012). In 2012, Sentinel lost its contract with the Superior Court of Richmond and Columbia county and
was ultimately replaced by another firm, CSRA probation. Chief Judge Carlisle Overstreet said CSRA was a better fit partly
because the court was “not in the money-making business.” Sandy Hodson and Barry Paschal, “New probation firm to replace
Sentinel in local courts,” The Augusta Chronicle, January 15, 2013, http://chronicle.augusta.com/news/crime-courts/2013-0114/new-probation-firm-replace-sentinel-local-courts (accessed December 4, 2013). Sentinel’s contract with the Richmond county
State Court was renewed in September 2013 despite the allegations swirling around the company’s practices there. Mike Miller,
“Sentinel To Offer Probation Services For Another Year,” WJBF, September 3, 2013,
http://www.wjbf.com/story/23331715/sentinel-to-offer-probation-services-for-another-year (accessed December 2013.
124 Cash et al. v. Sentinel Offender Services.
125 Human Rights Watch interview with probation company officials, Tucker, Georgia, October 10, 2013. For his part, Long

argues that the cases expose egregious malfeasance by both the court and Sentinel and adds that, “This is all a problem
because it breeds contempt for the judicial system.… They [probationers] come away thinking the whole court system is a
fucking joke. Are they ever going to have any respect for the judiciary after this? No, they aren’t.” Human Rights Watch
interview with Jack Long, Augusta, Georgia, July 26, 2013.

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mere aberrations.126 Rather, they fit into broader patterns of alleged abuse that often go
completely unpublicized, as discussed in our findings, below.

Threats of Incarceration
Many of the probationers interviewed by Human Rights Watch alleged that their company
probation officers routinely threatened to have them jailed for failing to make payments or
for falling into arrears—while refusing to take seriously their assertions that they could not
afford to keep up with scheduled payments. Those allegations are echoed by the lawsuits
against JCS and Sentinel in Alabama and Georgia. The complainants in a civil suit against
JCS and the town of Harpersville, Alabama allege that “On many occasions, JCS stated that
Plaintiffs must pay certain amounts, such as $200 or $500, or face immediate jail.”127
Probation company officials argued to Human Rights Watch that their employees have no
ability to jail anyone and that this power lies exclusively with the courts. But as a later
section of this report shows, some courts are so lax in their oversight of the probation
companies they hire and so eager to delegate responsibility to them that company
employees end up with a great deal of coercive power.128 And even where company
probation officers’ threats of incarceration are partly empty, they can still be coercive and
abusive. Many probationers do not realize the theoretical limits of their probation
company’s authority and take the threats at face value.129
In July 2013, Human Rights Watch interviewed a young woman who was then checked in to
a drug rehabilitation facility in Augusta, Georgia. In 2012 a Richmond county State Court
judge had modified her preexisting order of probation with Sentinel Offender Services to
require her to wear and pay for an electronic monitoring bracelet. Already struggling to
make ends meet and care for a young daughter while careening between unemployment
126 See Misty Dawn Bell v. Providence Community Corrections, Inc, US District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee, No.

3:2011-cv-00203, 2011. In that case the plaintiff, a PCC probationer, alleged that the company illegally “harasses and
intimidates” probationers in order to collect fees that are sometimes in excess of what they are entitled to. After the district
court denied PCC’s motion to dismiss a federal civil rights claim (while dismissing other claims), the case was settled. The
court docket does not reflect the terms of the settlement.
127 Gina Kay Ray and others v. Judicial Correction Services, Correctional Healthcare Companies, and the City of Childersburg,

US District Court for the Northern District of Alabama, No. 2:2012-cv-2819-RDP, Second Amended and Restated Complaint,
August 28, 2012, on file with Human Rights Watch. On September 26, 2013 the district court denied a motion to dismiss
(except that the court held that the release of incarcerated persons could only be sought by habeas corpus).
128 See below, Inappropriate Delegation of Court Responsibilities.
129 Human Rights Watch interviews with probationers, Mississippi, Georgia, and Alabama, June-October 2013.

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HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH | FEBRUARY 2014

and low-wage jobs at Waffle House and McDonalds, she now owed Sentinel roughly $300
per month in fees. She quickly fell behind and found her Sentinel probation officers
unwilling to take seriously her insistence that she was unable to pay:
Every time I went down there they was nasty. They’d threaten me with jail
and I said “Please, don’t throw me in jail. I don’t want to lose my kid.” I’d be
sitting there crying in front of these people and they’d just say, “Ma’am,
that’s not our problem. You are the one who got into trouble, you got to
figure this out yourself.” … I always felt like I was never going to get out
from under these people.130
Some court officials may openly or tacitly sanction such aggressive tactics. But in other
cases there is evidence that probation company employees threaten to jail offenders
without the knowledge or approval of the court. Judge James Straight, a Justice Court judge
in Bolivar county, Mississippi, told Human Rights Watch about a woman who had called
his court in tears, claiming that her JCS probation officer was threatening to have her jailed
over roughly $500 in arrears. Working a low-paying job at a local gas station, she had
struggled to keep up with her payments. Judge Straight recalled:
They were telling her, “If you don’t get us $545 or whatever it was, we will
get [the judge] to put you in jail.” She had called [her probation officer] and
said she could come up with about $200. [The probation officer] said, “No,
you have to pay it all or I’m getting the judge to put you in jail.” This lady
was crying on the phone to me.131
Judge Straight asked his clerk to look into the woman’s case and what they found was
surprising. She had only been fined $377 to begin with, for driving without a valid license.
What’s more, court records show that she already paid off that entire amount—but still
owed JCS about $500 in fees.132 In Judge Straight’s view, the court would never issue an
arrest warrant on that basis, but probationers have no way of knowing that. He added,

130 Human Rights Watch interview with Sentinel probationer [identity withheld], Augusta, Georgia, July 2013.
131 Human Rights Watch interview with Justice Court Judge James Straight, Cleveland, Mississippi, June 20, 2013.
132 Record of case from clerk, on file with Human Rights Watch.

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“They are misusing the court system to collect their fee. They are using us as judges. I
think they are after a fee and that’s it.”133
Company probation officers take great pains to ensure that no offender can pay off their
debt to the court before paying all of their probation fees. They do this by splitting each
payment made by their probationers between themselves and the court in a way that
guarantees the two debts will be paid down simultaneously.134 This reflects how heavily
reliant they are on the coercive powers of the court to collect their revenues. Even though
courts make payment of company fees a condition of probation, many courts would balk at
ordering the arrest of a person whose only debt is to a private company. One company
probation officer in Georgia explained the dilemma this way:
This is going to sound bad, but when it gets down to not that much money I
make sure there are still some fines left along with the fees. I can’t get a
warrant out on someone who only owes [company] fees.135

Jailing Offenders to Induce Payment
Vast numbers of arrest warrants are issued every year for offenders on private probation.
In Georgia alone, 124,788 arrest warrants were issued for offenders on private probation
in 2012.136 In other states the numbers reside solely with individual probation companies,
who do not make them public. In theory, these warrants are issued so offenders can be
brought before the court for a probation revocation hearing. But some company
probation officers secure the arrest of probationers who are behind on their payments as
a way of coercing them or their families into coming up with some of what they owe.

133 Human Rights Watch interview with Justice Court Judge James Straight, Cleveland, Mississippi, June 20, 2013. Crystal

Beach, the head of JCS’ Bolivar county office, told Human Rights Watch that she was not familiar with the case even though
she was the probation officer who allegedly threatened the woman. Human Rights Watch interview with Crystal Beach,
Probation Manager, Judicial Correction Services, Cleveland, Mississippi, June 20, 2013.
134 Some probation company contracts with courts and local governments specify exactly how partial payments will be split

between company fees and court revenues. In other cases it appears that this is determined informally or left to the
discretion of the probation company. Contracts on file with Human Rights Watch.
135 Human Rights Watch interview with company probation officer [identity withheld], Georgia, June 2013.
136 Data from Open Records Request to Georgia’s County and Municipal Probation Advisory Council (CMPAC), on file with

Human Rights Watch.

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HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH | FEBRUARY 2014

It works like this: an offender is arrested and put behind bars, nominally in order to await a
probation revocation hearing. The probation revocation hearing never takes place. Instead,
the company probation officer negotiates with the jailed probationer for partial payment of
what they owe. If they can come up with an agreed-upon sum, often just a few hundred
dollars, the probation officer asks the judge to order their release and they remain on
probation. Often, the offender never appears in court at all.137
In some cases, company employees approach jailed probationers’ families and negotiate
with them for payment. This disturbing practice essentially sees some company probation
officers use the courts to jail offenders in order to use them as hostages in financial
negotiations with spouses, parents and other relatives who are desperate to get them
released. A probation officer employed by one Georgia company described the process
this way:
I always try and negotiate with the families. Once they know you are serious
they come up with some money. That’s how you have to be. They have to
see that this person is not getting out unless they pay something. I’m just
looking for some good faith money, really. I got one guy I let out of jail today
and I got three or four more sitting there right now.… It’s hard. You get
cussed at, you get called every name in the book, you get people crying.138

She added that she “tries to avoid” bringing these cases in front of a judge, casting
court as a headache best avoided by everyone.139 But this approach essentially left
her with unfettered discretion and no judicial oversight of her efforts to use
incarceration to extract payments from offenders.
There is no evidence that most company probation officers engage in such practices and
many probation companies categorically reject them. Mark Contestabile of Sentinel
described direct approaches to probationers’ family members for money as “poor case
management” and said he doubted that any reputable probation company condoned such
practices on the part of their employees. But the line between permissible and
137 Human Rights Watch interviews with company probation officer and former company probation officer [identities
withheld], Georgia, June 2013.
138 Human Rights Watch interview with company probation officer [identity withheld], Georgia, June 2013.
139 Ibid.

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impermissible practice can be a fine one. Sentinel’s branch manager in Brunswick, Georgia
told Human Rights Watch that if an offender faces incarceration for failing to pay, “We do
not go calling his momma and saying, ‘Hey, bring us $500 of this $1,000 he owes.’ Now, if
she comes in here on her own with that money, we might take it. We don’t go telling his
momma, ‘You can’t pay it,’ or, ‘It won’t help his case.’”140

Hidden Costs to the Public
The misuse of incarceration as a collections tactic by some company probation officers is
not only abusive, but it also undercuts companies’ claim to provide services at no cost to
the public. In Georgia, it costs an average of $50 per day to keep an individual behind bars,
a cost borne by local taxpayers.141 In purely financial terms, a municipality loses money if it
keeps an offender behind bars for a week in order to collect $250 in fines. A 2012 Brennan
Center study showed that one North Carolina county spent more to pursue and jail 246
offenders for debt-related reasons than it ultimately collected from them.142 But such
calculations look very different from the perspective of a probation company that does not
have to account for these costs.
At least one local jurisdiction in Georgia has made an apparent and very disturbing
attempt to grapple with this issue by requiring its probation company to essentially rent
jail space as a condition of its contract. The town of Griffin requires its private probation
provider to pay a minimum of $2,500 per month in exchange for the right to “utilize
seventy-two (72) existing bed spaces per month for the incarceration of probation
inmates.”143 A subsequent communication to probation firms interested in bidding on the
contract confirmed that the fee was “for jail space used to house probationers.”144
In Human Rights Watch’s view, the imposition of such fees is troubling because they stand
as implicit confirmation of public authorities’ acceptance of the notion that private
probation companies have the de facto power to jail probationers. One probation company
140 Human Rights Watch interview with Jimmy Pitts, Brunswick, Georgia, July 24, 2013.
141 Georgia Department of Corrections, “FY2011 Allocation of Cost to Inmates, Probationers, Etc.” 2011,

http://www.dcor.state.ga.us/pdf/CorrectionsCosts.pdf (accessed January 23, 2014).
142 Rebekah Diller, Alicia Bannon, and Mitali Nagrecha, “Criminal Justice Debt: A Barrier to Reentry,” Brennan Center’s for

Justice, New York University School of Law, October 4, 2010, http://www.brennancenter.org/publication/criminal-justicedebt-barrier-reentry (accessed December 4, 2012), p.2.
143 RFP for Probation Services, on file with Human Rights Watch.
144 Human Rights Watch email correspondence with probation company executive [identity withheld], October 2013.

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HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH | FEBRUARY 2014

executive derisively referred to this requirement as a “kickback fee” that served no
legitimate public purpose and stated that his company refused to bid on Griffin’s contract
for precisely this reason. 145

145 Ibid.

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VI. Where Responsibility Lies:
Companies, Courts, and Governments
Many company officials contend that their employees have no real autonomy and therefore
little or no responsibility for any alleged abuses. Such arguments belie the vast amount of
power and discretion many company probation officers actually have in dealings with
probationers—a reality discussed in more detail in the pages that follow. Probation
companies have a clear responsibility to take effective steps to prevent abuse and to
provide redress for abuses that they bear responsibility for.146
That said, an enormous share of the responsibility for the problems described in this
report lies with state and local governments and with local courts. Many have failed to live
up to their responsibilities in three key ways:
•

Failing to exercise meaningful oversight over the operations of probation
companies and their treatment of probationers;

•

Inappropriately pushing a range of court responsibilities onto the private
probation firms they contract with; and

•

Tacitly or even overtly condoning the abusive company practices described in this
report by focusing exclusively on the financial returns secured by probation
companies rather than displaying concern for the rights of all involved.

The following pages discuss each of these problems in more detail.

146 The

2011 UN-backed Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights outlines the responsibility of governments to
protect individuals from human rights abuses tied to business operations, the responsibility of companies to respect
human rights, and the need for abuse victims to be able to access effective remedy. “Protect, Respect, and Remedy: a
Framework for Business and Human Rights,” U.N. Doc. A/HRC/8/5, April 7, 2008, http://www.reports-andmaterials.org/Ruggie-report-7-Apr-2008.pdf (accessed April 10, 2013); OHCHR, “Guiding Principles on Business and
Human Rights, Implementing the United Nations ‘Protect, Respect and Remedy’ Framework,” U.N. Doc. HR/PUB/11/04,
2011, http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Publications/GuidingPrinciplesBusinessHR_EN.pdf (accessed April 10, 2013).
For further discussion, see Christopher Albin-Lackey, “Without Rules: A Failed Approach to Corporate Accountability,”
World Report 2013, (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2013), http://www.hrw.org/world-report/2013/essays/112459.

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Local Realities: Little Oversight and Unfettered Company Discretion
Many probation company officials complain that the blame for alleged abuses is unfairly laid
at their doorsteps. They contend that their employees have no authority to do anything other
than faithfully execute the wishes of the courts they work with. As Tim Lewis of Sentinel
Offender Services put it, “The offenders we supervise are not sought by us. We sometimes
read that we prey upon people.… We don’t prey. We don’t lurk in the shadows.”147
To the extent that harsh or abusive practices prevail, company officials argue, this simply
reflects the actions of the court and not any exercise of power on their part.148 Because of
that, media and other reports critical of the industry simply “demonstrate that they don’t
understand the basics of what we do.”149 Tony Moreland of Georgia Probation Services put
it this way: “If you think that indigent people are getting locked up in this state, then you
need to be looking at the courts. I can’t declare anyone indigent. I have no authority.”150
The day-to-day reality of privatized probation in many localities is squarely at odds with
such assertions. Many company probation officers exercise considerable and largely
unfettered discretion in their dealings with probationers—whether the companies want it
that way or not.
Some company probation officers interviewed by Human Rights Watch candidly
acknowledged the wide power and discretion they possess in dealing with probationers.
Asked who decides whether to jail an offender who is behind on payments, one company
probation officer in Georgia replied, “I do, pretty much.” She explained that the municipal
judges she works with generally sign warrants and release orders that she has prepared,
without asking for any information about the cases. As of July 2013 she said that she had
over 100 arrest warrants out for probationers under her supervision, out of a total caseload
of 600 people.151

147 Human Rights Watch interview with probation company officials, Tucker, Georgia, October 10, 2013.
148 See Judicial Correction Services, “Statement in Response to a Baseless Lawsuit in Childersburg, Alabama,” August 29,

2012, http://fairprobationservices.com/content/statement-in-response-to-a-baseless-lawsuit-in-childersburg-alabama/
(accessed December 6, 2013).
149 Human Rights Watch interview with probation company officials, Tucker, Georgia, October 10, 2013.
150 Ibid.
151 Human Rights Watch interview with company probation officer [identity withheld], Georgia, June 2013.

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Many courts exercise little meaningful oversight over the probation companies they hire.
The primary reason many local authorities hire probation companies is because their
services promise increased collections at no public cost. Many courts lack the institutional
resources to ensure proper oversight of those companies—the entire staff of some local
courts consists of just one overburdened clerk. But if public officials dedicate public
resources to solving this problem, it cuts back on net financial returns. The temptation is to
adopt a “hear no evil, see no evil” approach to hiring probation companies, where courts
happily accept the checks probation companies cut them without asking too many
questions about how collections are secured.
The net result is this: in many courts the only people tracking important baseline data
about a probation company’s dealings with probationers are the company’s own
employees. Some court clerks interviewed by Human Rights Watch referred even the most
basic questions about probation caseloads, revenues collected from probationers and
even the number of probationers arrested for nonpayment back to the company.152
As a result of these problems, some judges and other court officials know very little about
the tactics their probation companies use to induce payment by offenders. For example,
the chief clerk of one Mississippi Justice Court that works with JCS told Human Rights
Watch that the company had been effective at pulling in revenues from probationers. But
when asked how JCS managed to get offenders to pay she replied, “I don’t know exactly
what all they do but they seem effective.”153 Some judges do not appear to have even a
basic notion of what the probation companies they hire actually do. When Human Rights
Watch asked one Justice Court judge in Jackson what kind of supervision is offered by the
probation company to which he regularly assigns offenders, he replied that the company’s
probation officer “is a pastor. I’m not; I just wear a black dress. He can go deeper. He can
really talk about what is going on in a person’s soul. I don’t have the ability to do that.”154
As this report shows, what some company probation officers actually do is have
probationers arrested to coerce them or their families into coming up with cash. While a
judge must sign the arrest warrants in those cases, it is often a company employee who

152 Human Rights Watch interviews with court officials, Mississippi and Georgia, June and July 2013.
153 Human Rights Watch interview with Justice Court clerk [identity withheld], Mississippi, June 2013.
154 Human Rights Watch interview with Justice Court Judge [identity withheld], Jackson, Mississippi, June 21, 2013.

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prepares the warrant and presents it to the judge for signature. Some judges do not make
the time even to verify why the warrants are being requested, or that they have been sworn
under oath.155 As one Mississippi judge whose court contracts with a private probation
company put it, “You get a lot of paperwork and you see it and they give their reasons
there and you just sign it. You don’t have time to scrutinize everything.”156
One result is that some judges may have no clear idea of how many probationers they have
ordered to be arrested, or why. In Greenwood, Mississippi, Municipal Judge Carlos Palmer
told Human Rights Watch that he had “maybe two or three” active arrest warrants out for
JCS probationers. But data later obtained by Human Rights Watch showed that as of
August 2013 there were 295 active warrants for JCS probationers issued by his court—25
percent of JCS’ total caseload there at the time.157 Judge Palmer’s caseload contains a
heavy preponderance of traffic offenses.
Some judges appear to believe that their private probation officers are providing more in
the way of supervision and assistance than they really are. Judge Palmer told Human
Rights Watch that his JCS probation officers, “are really diligent about having one on one
services with people … they work with people about their circumstances.”158 But several
probationers who Judge Palmer had sentenced to JCS probation described the company’s
Greenwood office as concerned solely with collecting payments. A deputy with the local
sheriff’s department told Human Rights Watch that he had been paying down an $897 fine
his adult son had incurred, along with JCS’ supervision fees, for several months.159 “When I
go to pay they say, ‘You come to pay on your son?’ I say, ‘Yep,’ and they say ‘OK’ and go
right to the computer, hit the button, and then you give them the money and you leave.” To
his knowledge, his son—the probationer supposedly under supervision—never set foot in
the JCS office at all. 160
155 Human Rights Watch interviews with probation company employees and court officials, Georgia and Mississippi, June and

July 2013; see also Sandy Hodson, “Sentinel employee says warrant procedures not always followed,” The Augusta Chronicle,
July 12, 2013, http://chronicle.augusta.com/news/crime-courts/2013-07-12/sentinel-employee-says-warrant-proceduresnot-always-followed (accessed December 4, 2013).
156 Human Rights Watch interview with Justice Court Judge, Mississippi, June 2013.
157 Human Rights Watch interview with Municipal Judge Carlos Palmer, Chancery Court Clerk Sam Abraham, and Justice Court

Clerk Larissa Hunt, Greenwood, Mississippi, June 18, 2013.
158 Ibid.
159 According to JCS-issued receipts, Keys made monthly payments of $140 between January and June 2013, with $40 going

towards probation fees. Keys’ son, Cory Sean Peeler, was charged $897.25 in fines plus a $10 startup fee and another $65 to
attend a one day JCS-run “restorative justice” class. Receipts, on file with Human Rights Watch.
160 Human Rights Watch interview with Coy Lee Keys, Greenwood, Mississippi, June 17, 2013.

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Finally, it is important to note that some company probation officers appear to exacerbate
all of these problems by actively discouraging probationers from approaching the courts
with questions, problems, or concerns about their probation. Written instructions for new
probationers that are widely used by JCS probation officers, for instance, contain the
following admonition: “Do not contact the court, they will be unable to help you.”
(emphasis in the original).161

Inappropriate Delegation of Court Responsibilities
Some courts do more than just fail to provide strong oversight to the probation companies
they work with—they deliberately push some of their own responsibilities and powers onto
those companies’ shoulders. An earlier section of this report described what is arguably
the most important example of this: courts that expect probation companies to determine
whether the offenders assigned to them possess the ability to pay the fines, court costs
and probation fees they are sentenced to—even though this poses a direct conflict with the
companies’ own financial interests. Some courts inappropriately delegate other core
responsibilities to probation firms as well.
The head of one Georgia probation company complained to Human Rights Watch that
some courts require probation companies to perform tasks as diverse as transporting
offenders sentenced to community service to and from their job assignments; preparing
sentencing sheets for all cases that come before the court; and providing interpreters for
all court sessions, whether the cases involve probation or not.162 Requirements like these
essentially see courts—often in response to shrinking budgets—try to turn their offenderfunded probation service into offender-funded officers of the court.
In some cases all of this can add up to serious allegations that courts unlawfully delegate
a range of coercive powers to their probation companies.

161 JCS instructions for new probationers, on file with Human Rights Watch.
162 Human Rights Watch email correspondence with probation company executive [identity withheld], October 2013.

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Harpersville’s Cautionary Tale
Harpersville is a small town in Alabama’s Shelby county that was hit hard by the US
economic recession.163 Struggling to pay for basic services, Harpersville leaned
increasingly heavily on its Municipal Court to generate revenue. The court contracted with
JCS, which works with at least 100 Alabama courts, to collect money from offenders on
long-term payment plans.
Ultimately, Harpersville’s attempts to use its criminal court as a money maker landed the
town in serious trouble. In 2012, JCS and the Harpersville Municipal Court were hit with a
lawsuit alleging illegal and abusive collections practices. The plaintiffs allege along with
other abuses that the town’s Municipal Court “abrogated its judicial responsibilities and
has allowed JCS to operate as a quasi-judicial agency” in violation of state law.”164
JCS commissioned R. Bernard Harwood Jr., a former Associate Justice of the Alabama
Supreme Court, to produce a report on the allegations at issue in the Harpersville
litigation. Harwood found no merit to any of the allegations against JCS, arguing that in
each case all responsibility for alleged abuses lay squarely with the court and not JCS.165
But in a blistering 2012 ruling, county Circuit Court Judge Hub Harrington blasted both the
company and the court.
Judge Harrington accused the Harpersville court of running a “debtor’s prison” and a
“judicially sanctioned extortion racket” and labeled its performance “disgraceful.” Along
with other abuses “so numerous as to defy a detailed chronicling in this short space,” his
ruling found that the Harpersville court had allowed JCS to issue orders for probationers to
appear in court independent of any judicial authority—and then incarcerating those who
failed to comply with those “orders.”166 The county sheriff seized the court’s records.167

163 The town’s sales tax revenue plummeted from $408,000 to $330,000, between 2009 and 2010.
164 Burdette et al. v. Town of Harpersville et al., Circuit Court of Shelby County, Alabama, No. cv-2010-900183, Third amended

complaint, July 17, 2012. See also Ethan Bronner, “Poor Land in Jail as Companies Add Huge Fees for Probation,” New York
Times, July 2, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/03/us/probation-fees-multiply-as-companiesprofit.html?_r=3&pagewanted=all& (accessed December 4, 2013).
165 Judicial Correction Services, “Statement in Response to a Baseless Lawsuit in Childersburg, Alabama,” August 29, 2012,
http://fairprobationservices.com/content/statement-in-response-to-a-baseless-lawsuit-in-childersburg-alabama/ (accessed
December 6, 2013).
166 Burdette et al. v. Town of Harpersville et al., Circuit Court of Shelby County, Alabama, No. cv-2010-900183, Ruling, July 11,

2012, on file with Human Rights Watch.

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Harpersville ultimately responded to this litigation by shutting the Municipal Court down
altogether. This left the town facing a $300,000 revenue shortfall in 2013—the amount it
had expected to receive from court and JCS collections. Moving forward, the town is faced
with two unpalatable options—cutting back on emergency services, or raising revenue
through an increase in the local sales tax.168 The litigation is still pending as of January
2014. Harpersville now faces the prospect of another serious financial hit should the case
go against it.

Weak State Government Oversight
Many probation companies make serious efforts to prevent abuse through their own internal
controls, and every probation company at least claims to do so. Chief Executive Officer of JCS
Robert McMichael acknowledged to Human Rights Watch that: “We’ve hired some bad
apples. We’ve hired some folks who stole from us. We’ve hired some people who’ve been
abusive.” He added, “You have to show that you are not going to tolerate it.”169
But companies can’t go it alone, and their own efforts can never be an adequate substitute
for responsible government oversight.170 As Amy Hartley, a former official with the
oversight body set up by the state of Georgia to regulate misdemeanor probation services
there said, “in this business you really can’t have enough oversight.” She added that even
where probation firms might be well-intentioned, “some companies have gotten so large
that it’s difficult for them to oversee their own operations.”171 Unfortunately, state
government oversight is generally weak and some states have all but abdicated these
responsibilities.172

167 Kent Faulk, “Harpersville court records seized by Shelby county Sheriff's Office and Alabama Attorney General,” The

Birmingham News, August 10, 2012, http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2012/08/harpersville_court_records_sei.html (accessed
December 4, 2013).
168 Martin J. Reed, “Harpersville mayor: Loss of court revenue causing budget shortfall,” The Birmingham News, May 17, 2013

http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2013/05/harpersville_mayor_loss_of_cou.html (accessed December 4, 2013).
169 Human Rights Watch interview with probation company officials, Tucker, Georgia, October 10, 2013.
170 Governments have a duty to regulate business in order to prevent and effectively address human rights abuses. See

Human Rights Watch, Out of Control: Mining, Regulatory Failure, and Human Rights in India, June 2012,
http://www.hrw.org/reports/2012/06/14/out-control-0.
171 Human Rights Watch interview with Amy Hartley, former CMPAC compliance officer and chief probation officer, Macon,

Georgia, July 23, 2013.
172 See “Standards in the Privatization of Probation Services: A Statutory Analysis” for examples including the fact that

“There are no requirements in Missouri’s statutes to provide any verification of fees collected, nor are there any educational

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A good place for state governments to start would be to require basic transparency about
the revenues probation companies extract from probationers. No state does this now.
Probation companies defend their lack of transparency on fee collection on commercial
grounds, casting it as a trade secret they are loath to share with their competitors. Tony
Moreland, the head of Georgia Probation Services, explained to Human Rights Watch that
if his larger competitors knew which of the courts he contracted with were particularly
lucrative, “They would be all over them like a chicken on a June bug.”173 These commercial
imperatives may be real, but in Human Rights Watch’s view they are vastly outweighed by
the public interest in transparency around this issue. Not only is this important because of
the potential for corruption—an issue discussed in greater detail below—but it is
necessary to allow for public understanding about the financial impact of offender-funded
probation on probationers.

Georgia: A Credible Model With Serious Flaws
Georgia is the only US state with a regulatory framework that provides meaningful public
oversight of the private probation industry. Structurally, Georgia’s model is a useful
example for other states that do far less. However, the state’s approach is insufficient in
key respects and should be bolstered dramatically.
Georgia state law lays down basic requirements for contracting, standards of professional
conduct and transparency by probation firms. It also establishes an oversight body with
audit and investigatory powers, the County and Municipal Probation Advisory Council
(CMPAC). CMPAC aims to “ensure the provision of quality, ethical and professional
misdemeanor probation service to the courts and citizens of Georgia through evaluation,
education, and regulation.”174 Its mandate includes oversight of both private and publicly
run misdemeanor probation services across the state. Staff monitors have the power to
refer companies to the Council to revoke their registration.

requirements in place for staff.” Christine Schloss and Lianne Alaird, “Standards in the Privatization of Probation Services: A
Statutory Analysis,” Criminal Justice Review, vol. 32, (2007): 233, accessed December 4, 2013,
http://www.sagepub.com/hanserstudy/articles/05/Schloss.pdf, p.236.
173 Human Rights Watch interview with company officials, Tucker, Georgia, October 10, 2013.
174 County and Municipal Probation Advisory Council of Georgia (CMPAC), “Home Page,” undated,

http://www.cmpac.gaaoc.us/ (December 4, 2013).

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Transparency and its Limits
All private probation companies in Georgia are required to register with CMPAC and to
provide it with quarterly reports that include a range of important baseline data about their
operations at a court-by-court level. This includes figures for the amount of court revenues
collected, the number of cases supervised; and the number of active warrants taken out
for probationers. Unfortunately this information is not made readily available to the public
and CMPAC is not statutorily required to publish it—though Human Rights Watch was
easily able to obtain the information by formally requesting it under Georgia’s Open
Records Act.
This is more data than any other US state collects from probation companies, but Georgia’s
efforts here are undermined by one crucial, glaring omission. Probation companies are
required to report how much money they collect for the courts they work with, but not how
much money they collect for themselves from probationers. The only people who know
exactly how much money probation firms are extracting in fees from the people they
supervise are those companies’ own employees.

Audits and Investigations
CMPAC subjects all probation companies operating in the state—as well as publicly run
misdemeanor probation services—to periodic compliance reviews. These reviews
scrutinize companies’ records and look generally to ensure that they are in compliance
with state laws and regulations.
CMPAC’s audit regime is a sound approach in principle but is under-resourced and, partly
as a consequence, its audits are too predictable and too narrow. Eighty-eight different
private probation companies work with 643 courts across Georgia yet CMPAC—which is
also responsible for overseeing publicly run misdemeanor probation services—has just
two compliance monitors on staff.175 This means any one company generally has to face a
compliance review only once every 18-24 months. That review focuses on a headquarterslevel audit plus just one site-level visit. Some companies work with dozens of courts
scattered all across Georgia so most of their local offices will never be directly scrutinized
by a compliance review.

175 CMPAC’s entire professional staff consists of four people. CMPAC, “Council Staff,” undated,

http://www.cmpac.gaaoc.us/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=21&Itemid=31 (accessed December 13, 2013).

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Another key shortcoming is that CMPAC does not carry out unannounced inspections as
part of its compliance reviews. These would add a vital extra layer of vigor to CMPAC’s
activities because as things currently stand, companies are able to prepare in advance for
any site-level visits by CMPAC staff—meaning that there is ample opportunity for
unscrupulous firms or local staff to try to paper over any problems before the visit happens.
All of this argues for dramatically increasing CMPAC’s monitoring capacity. Amy Hartley, who
worked as a compliance review officer and as interim staff director at CMPAC before leaving
to head up a publicly run probation service in Macon, told Human Rights Watch that:
Ideally you’d want to have at least 10 monitors, for how many courts are
supervised. That way you could do surprise visits.… My goal [at CMPAC] was
to make sure that people at least get some minimum standard of due
process and have their rights respected. Not everyone did. And I’m sure
some still do not. But some [companies] do a really good job.176
In addition to regular compliance reviews, CMPAC is empowered to investigate allegations
of wrongdoing by probation companies. The institution has in fact uncovered serious
abuses and illegalities by both private and publicly run probation companies in recent
years.177 Unfortunately, the reports generated by CMPAC investigations are not made
readily available to the public.178

Other States: Weak or Nonexistent Oversight
As flawed as Georgia’s regulatory model is, it is far more comprehensive than the efforts
of other states where private probation is in widespread use. Many of those states have
no statutory or regulatory frameworks in place at all. Others, like Florida and Missouri,
provide for some regulation of the terms of local authorities’ contractual relationships
with probation companies but no systematic oversight of actual company conduct.179
176 Human Rights Watch interview with Amy Hartley, former CMPAC compliance officer and chief probation officer, Macon,

Georgia, July 23, 2013.
177 See, for example, Conny Cooper, “Private probation company loses license; hundreds to be affected,” WTOC, March 21, 2013,

http://www.wtoc.com/story/21761963/private-probation-company-loses-license-hundreds-to-be-affected (accessed December 4, 2013).
178 Human Rights Watch viewed several reports that were provided to other researchers pursuant to an Open Records
Request but these were very heavily redacted.
179 Christine Schloss and Lianne Alaird, “Standards in the Privatization of Probation Services: A Statutory Analysis,” Criminal

Justice Review, vol. 32, (2007): 233, accessed December 4, 2013,

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In Mississippi, JCS and other probation companies have expanded rapidly into some of the
poorest counties in the United States. Yet the state has no laws on the books that
specifically address private probation. Oversight takes place at the local level or not at all.
Justice Court Judge James Straight, whose court contracted with JCS in Mississippi’s Bolivar
county, put it this way: “Oversight? You’ve hit the nail on the head right there. There’s no
oversight, no rules. No regulations and no penalties.”180
Alabama presents a similar regulatory vacuum. One recent effort to pass legislation
regulating the probation industry was widely criticized as overly deferential to the interests
of large probation companies and lacking in real regulatory vigor.181
Where states do have a regulatory framework in place, it is generally far weaker than the
Georgia model. Tennessee has established a Private Probation Services Council that
registers all private probation companies active in the state and oversees the
implementation of mandatory orientation and background check requirements for
company probation officers.182 The state does not track baseline data about probation
companies—this is left to individual courts if it happens at all.183 It also has the power to
receive complaints, but these must be very limited in scope. The Council’s enforcement
powers largely relate to recordkeeping requirements and a broad prohibition against
fraud.184 Many of the complaints the Council does address revolve around alleged
company failures to submit required quarterly activity reports the courts.185

http://www.sagepub.com/hanserstudy/articles/05/Schloss.pdf, p.236. See also, Florida Statute (Fla. Stat.), 948.15;
Alabama Code (Ala. Code), 15-22-2; Missouri Revised Statutes (Mo. Rev. Stat.), 559.600-615.
180 Human Rights Watch interview with Justice Court Judge James Straight, Cleveland, Mississippi, June 20, 2013.
181 Tim Lockette, “Outsourcing justice: Opponents say private probation companies create modern-day debtors' prisons,”

Anniston Star, October 12, 2013, http://www.thepiedmontjournal.com/view/full_story/23840697/article-Outsourcingjustice--Opponents-say-private-probation-companies-create-modern-day-debtors--prisons (accessed December 26, 2013);
Human Rights Watch interview with Lisa Borden, Birmingham, Alabama, October 8, 2013.
182 Tenn Code 16-3-901 to 910. See also State of Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance, “Private Probations

Services Council,” undated, http://tn.gov/regboards/privatepro/ (accessed December 4, 2013); “Rules of Tennessee Private
Probations Services Council,” August 2010, http://www.tennessee.gov/sos/rules/1177/1177-01.20100825.pdf (accessed
December 6, 2013).
183 Email from Donna Hancock, Executive Director Tennessee Department of Commerce & Insurance Division of Regulatory

Boards Combined Boards & Programs, to Human Rights Watch, August 29, 2013. “If there is tracking of the information above
the court level I am not aware of it.”
184 See Tennessee Private Probation Council, “Rules of Tennessee Private Probation Council Chapter 1177-2. Rules of
Professional Conduct,” September, 2005, http://www.tennessee.gov/sos/rules/1177/1177-02.pdf (accessed January 24, 2014).
185 In 2012, the council asked its Assistant General Council to determine whether it had the authority to regulate the fees

charged by probation companies; he concluded that it did not. Tennessee Private Probation Services Council Minutes, June 1
2012, on file with Human Rights Watch.

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Opportunities for Corruption
Where government oversight is weak or nonexistent, some private probation officers are
presented with easy opportunities for corruption. While courts stand to lose revenue to
this kind of graft, probationers whose payments are stolen risk losing their freedom if
they are wrongly accused of non-payment.
As described above, many courts that contract with private probation companies take no
independent steps to verify the amount of revenue collected by those firms.186
Companies pass along the revenues they have collected for the court at regular intervals,
often alongside one or two-page reports that break down how much the company has
collected for the court from each offender.187 These reports generally do not include
receipts or any other supporting documentation. If a probation company employee were
to skim money off the top of probationers’ payments before passing them on to the court,
many courts would have no way of knowing unless probationers pieced the theft together
through their own receipts and complained. As one official with the Municipal Court in
Birmingham, Alabama, which contracts with JCS, put it, “No one here sees what they
collect in fees. They could ask but no one does.”188
This is not just a hypothetical problem. Probation company officials interviewed by Human
Rights Watch acknowledged that instances of corruption have occurred. But in general,
company officials interviewed by Human Rights Watch expressed confidence that incidents
were rare and that they were quickly detected and harshly dealt with.
It is not at all clear that such confidence is warranted. A then JCS probation officer working
with the Municipal Court in Clarksdale, Mississippi was arrested in April 2013 and charged
with embezzlement.189 Court officials alleged that she regularly skimmed money off the top
of checks she handed over to the court each month for quite some time before being
caught and arrested.190 In an interview, court clerk John King told Human Rights Watch that

186 See above, Where Responsibility Lies.
187 JCS Activity Reports, on file with Human Rights Watch.
188 Human Rights Watch interview with Municipal Court

official, Birmingham, Alabama, October 7, 2013.

189 See Jesse Wright, “Judicial Collections Employee Arrested for Embezzlement,” Clarksdale Press Register, April 18, 2013,

http://www.pressregister.com/news/local/article_3d26a3f8-a828-11e2-9df6-001a4bcf887a.html (accessed January 23, 2014).
190 JCS later confirmed this to Human Rights Watch. Human Rights Watch interview with probation company officials, Tucker,

Georgia, October 10, 2013.

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his court only caught on to the problem in mid-2013 because the alleged culprit started
stealing more than she could hide. He said that sometimes she failed to deliver regular
weekly payments to the court altogether.191
Asked whether the ongoing theft would have been detected had it been kept to a more
modest level, the clerk replied, “Would anyone have noticed if she was just taking $100
or $150 off the top every time? Probably not.”192 Yet that modest-sounding level of
ongoing theft could very easily land people in jail, because every dollar stolen by a
corrupt probation officer is a dollar a probationer is wrongly accused of failing to pay. In
the Clarksdale case, JCS apparently did not know whether the graft had resulted in the
issuance of baseless arrest warrants against probationers. JCS area supervisor Crystal
Beach told Human Rights Watch that the company had suspended processing arrest
warrants out of that office because “we want to make sure we don’t falsely arrest
anyone who was doing what they were supposed to do.”193
In fact, the very origins of Georgia’s probation industry are bound up with a corruption
scandal. Bobby Whitworth, then chairman of Georgia’s Board of Pardons and Parole
was prosecuted and jailed for accepting an illegal payment of $75,000 from a probation
firm called Detention Management Services (later acquired by Sentinel). The payment
was allegedly in exchange for Whitworth’s efforts to help secure passage of the state
law that transferred misdemeanor probation services from the state to individual
counties in 2,000—opening the door to the private probation industry in Georgia.194

191 Human Rights Watch interview with John King, Municipal Court clerk, Clarksdale, Mississippi, June 20, 2013.
192 Ibid.
193 Human Rights Watch interview with Crystal Beach, Probation Manager, Judicial Correction Services, Cleveland,
Mississippi, June 20, 2013.
194 Christine Schloss and Lianne Alaird, “Standards in the Privatization of Probation Services: A Statutory Analysis,” Criminal

Justice Review, vol. 32, (2007): 233, accessed December 4, 2013,
http://www.sagepub.com/hanserstudy/articles/05/Schloss.pdf, p.235.

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VII. Human Rights Norms and
“Offender-Funded” Probation
The problems described in this report implicate US Constitutional protections as well as
international human rights norms. These issues are discussed where relevant throughout
this report but it is worthwhile to summarize the most important points here.
The US Supreme Court ruled in Bearden v. Georgia that a court cannot revoke a person’s
probation and imprison them simply because they are genuinely unable to pay a fine.195 An
earlier section of this report discussed Bearden and its implications in detail.196 Our
research raises concerns that the spirit if not the letter of the court’s holding in that case is
routinely flouted by overburdened courts that make little or no effort to ascertain whether
offenders are genuinely unable to pay fines and probation fees. Many courts rely on their
probation services to determine when an offender is genuinely unable to pay fines or
probation fees—which may be an entirely reasonable approach in some cases. But where a
court’s probation service is a private company whose profits depend on their ability to
collect money from offenders, asking it to determine whether an offender is able to pay the
company’s own fees presents a direct and insoluble conflict of interest.197 This is
compounded by the fact that under existing legal frameworks, private probation firms are
often far less transparent about the revenues they collect from offenders than publicly run
probation services are obliged to be. Courts that decide to contract with probation
companies on an offender-funded basis should take on the responsibility for assessing
whether offenders have the financial means to pay what they owe themselves—even if this
means hiring additional court staff.
Under international law, governments are required to respect individuals’ right to
adequate housing, food and other basic needs that are recognized as economic, social
and cultural rights. States are obligated to refrain from interfering with people’s ability to
access and enjoy these rights.198 The practical import of these rights here is to provide a
195 Bearden v. Georgia.
196 See above, Ignoring Offenders’ Inability to Pay.
197 See above, Conflicts of Interest.
198 A state is also required to work towards the progressive realization of these economic, social and cultural rights over time

“to the maximum of its available resources” International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR),

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useful practical framework for how courts should apply the requirements set forth under

Bearden. Specifically, courts should refrain from incarcerating offenders who are entirely
indigent for the sole reason that they are unable to pay fines, court costs, and probation
fees, when doing so would impair their ability to feed, clothe, house or provide healthcare
for themselves and their dependents. Many states require courts to waive fines, probation
fees and other costs for offenders who are “indigent.” But this term is often left ambiguous
and some courts and probation companies appear to interpret it as including only cases of
absolute material deprivation.
This report has also argued that the imposition of supervision fees in pay only cases
discriminates against low-income offenders by saddling them with significantly higher
financial penalties than offenders of greater financial means.199 Courts should reduce or
waive probation fees where they would impose a significant impediment to an offender’s
ability to fulfill basic needs that are recognized as fundamental rights under international
law because they are discriminatory as well. As discussed in this report, fees are only
assessed when a probationer is unable to pay fines or other court penalties immediately,
which is most often for reasons of poverty. Indeed, probation fees are the highest, and
time on probation the longest, for those least able to pay. Probation fees, therefore,
constitute a discriminatory penalty, as well as a discriminatory impediment to the
realization of basic rights, imposed on the basis of property or lack thereof.
Probation fees are distinguishable from fines in this context because the financial costs
involved are not penalties imposed to secure accountability for a crime, but ancillary costs
that are simply intended to force criminal offenders to shoulder the public costs of
operating a functioning court system or probation service.200
Similarly, Article 11 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights prohibits
imprisonment “merely on the ground of inability to fulfill a contractual obligation,”
adopted December 16, 1966, G.A. Res. 2200A (XXI), 21 U.N. GAOR Supp. (No. 16) at 49, U.N. Doc A/6316 (1966), 993 U.N.T.S.
3, entered into Force January 3, 1976, art. 2.1. The United States is not a party to the International Covenant on Economic,
Social, and Cultural Rights, which elucidates these rights in the greatest detail. However, it does endorse the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, a foundational document of the United Nations that also states these basic rights, and which is
commonly considered a statement of customary international law.
199 See above, Pay Only Probation and Supervision Fees: An Abusive Legal Fiction.
200 For analogous reporting in the context of pretrial detention, see Human Rights Watch, United States—The Price of

Freedom: Bail and Pretrial Detention of Low Income Nonfelony Defendants in New York City, December 2010,
http://www.hrw.org/reports/2010/12/02/price-freedom-0.

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including failure to pay one’s debts.201 The strict applicability of Article 11 to the issues
described in this report is debatable, since fines and probation fees flow from a criminal
sanction, or a court’s order, rather than a civil contract. On the other hand, debt accrued in
the form of probation fees is owed to private, for-profit companies rather than to the state.
Offenders who are imprisoned for failure to pay are incarcerated for failure to pay both public
and private debts, even if both are the result of a court order rather than a civil contract.
Article 11 is therefore of clear relevance to these issues even if it is not directly binding. In any
case, some national courts have read Article 11 as imposing requirements similar to those
developed by the US Supreme Court in Bearden—namely, that debtors cannot be imprisoned
for failure to pay unless the prosecution is able to meet its burden of proof at a fair trial that
the individual’s failure to pay was willful rather than reflecting an inability to pay.202
Some of the alleged abusive collection practices described in this report—in particular the
threat and actual use of incarceration as a way of coercing offenders or their families into
payment—also raise human rights concerns. Under Bearden as well as internationally
guaranteed norms of due process, offenders have a right to present evidence that they are
unable to pay fines and probation fees before having their probation revoked and being
incarcerated.
When company probation officers, acting as de facto agents of the court, threaten
offenders with automatic incarceration should they fail to make payment and refuse to
acknowledge evidence of an offender’s inability to pay, they are interfering with the
offender’s fundamental due process rights. When company probation officers use the
courts to secure the actual arrest of probationers who are behind on their payments in
order to pressure them or their relatives into making a payment rather than because they
intend to bring them into court for a probation revocation hearing, the offender’s due
process rights are directly and inexcusably denied.
Finally, it is important to underscore that business themselves have a clear responsibility
under international human rights norms to take effective steps to prevent human rights
abuses linked to their operations and to provide redress for any abuses that do occur.

201 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), adopted December 16, 1966, G.A. Res. 2200A (XXI), 21 U.N.

GAOR Supp. (No. 16) at 52, U.N. Doc. A/6316 (1966), 999 U.N.T.S. 171, entered into force March 23, 1976, art. 11.
202 See, for example, McCann v. Judge of the Monaghan District Court and Others, High Court of Ireland, 2006 4300P,

Judgment, June 18, 2009, http://www.bailii.org/ie/cases/IEHC/2009/H276.html (accessed January 6, 2012).

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Even where state and local governments are woefully lax and permissive in their dealings
with probation companies, the companies themselves have a responsibility to prevent
abuse and to effectively address any abuses that do occur. The United Nations-backed
Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights outline the responsibility of
governments to protect individuals from human rights abuses tied to business operations,
the responsibility of companies to respect human rights, and the need for abuse victims to
be able to access effective remedy. The Guiding Principles recognize that companies have
a responsibility to identify potential human rights risks associated with their operations—
placing great emphasis on the importance of human rights due diligence—and take
effective steps to prevent those potential abuses. Companies should also establish
effective and confidential channels that individuals can use to safely and effectively
complain about alleged abuses linked to company operations. Where abuses do occur,
businesses have a responsibility to identify victims and ensure that they have access to a
suitable and effective remedy.203

203 “Protect, Respect, and Remedy: a Framework for Business and Human Rights,” U.N. Doc. A/HRC/8/5, April 7, 2008,
http://www.reports-and-materials.org/Ruggie-report-7-Apr-2008.pdf (accessed April 10, 2013); OHCHR, “Guiding Principles
on Business and Human Rights, Implementing the United Nations ‘Protect, Respect, and Remedy’ Framework,” U.N. Doc.
HR/PUB/11/04, 2011, http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Publications/GuidingPrinciplesBusinessHR_EN.pdf (accessed April
10, 2013). For further discussion, see Christopher Albin-Lackey, “Without Rules: A Failed Approach to Corporate
Accountability,” World Report 2013, (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2013), http://www.hrw.org/worldreport/2013/essays/112459.

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Acknowledgments
This report was researched and written by Chris Albin-Lackey, senior researcher on
Business and Human Rights at Human Rights Watch.
It was reviewed and edited by Arvind Ganesan, business and human rights director;
Antonio Ginatta, US Program advocacy director; Dinah Pokempner, general counsel; and
Babatunde Olugboji, deputy program director. Additional research assistance was
provided by Darcy Milburn, business and human rights associate; Savannah Glidewell,
intern; and Sarah Saadoun. The report was prepared for publication by Grace Choi,
publications director; Kathy Mills, publications specialist; and Fitzroy Hepkins,
administrative manager.
Human Rights Watch offers its gratitude to the individuals and organizations that helped
facilitate this research, including those who have generously supported our work on
business and human rights. Human Rights Watch would particularly like to thank all of the
individuals who agreed to be interviewed for this report, especially the current and former
probationers who shared their stories. Human Rights Watch would also like to extend
particular thanks to the following individuals: Dale Allen, chief probation officer for
Athens-Clarke county, Georgia, who read and commented on a draft version of this report;
Augusta, Georgia attorney Jack Long, who helped facilitate interviews with several former
Sentinel probationers; Birmingham attorneys Danny Evans and Alexandria Parrish, who
helped facilitate interviews with current and former JCS probationers in Chlildersburg,
Alabama; and Hannah Rappleye and Lisa Riordan-Seville, whose reporting on private
probation services helped inspire Human Rights Watch to carry out this research.

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PROFITING FROM PROBATION
America’s “Offender-Funded” Probation Industry
Every year US courts sentence several hundred thousand misdemeanor offenders to probation and place them under the
supervision of private, for-profit probation companies. These companies charge courts nothing for their services. Instead, they
charge those they supervise a range of fees that sometimes become exorbitant—often with minimal judicial or government
supervision of how they treat probationers or how much money they collect from them in fees.
Profiting from Probation: America’s “Offender-Funded” Probation Industry details widespread patterns of abuse and economic
hardship that flow directly from the probation industry’s “offender-funded” business model. It describes how many courts let
probation companies act as heavy-handed debt collectors while forcing the poorest offenders to pay steep costs for their
services. Many of those affected are guilty only of minor traffic offenses and would not be on probation at all if they had the
money to pay their fines immediately.
This report documents abusive practices by some probation companies and the failures of government oversight that fuel them.
Probation companies work with well over 1,000 low-level courts in at least a dozen US states, but no state or local government
even bothers to track how much money these companies collect for themselves in probation fees.
The report lays out pragmatic recommendations on how state governments, judges, local officials, and the companies can
protect against abuse and end the practice of turning probation fees into a discriminatory penalty levied on the poorest
offenders.

Thomas Barrett, destitute and living primarily off food
stamps, was arrested in 2012 for stealing a can of
beer valued at $2 and was sentenced to probation
with Sentinel Offender Services, a for-profit firm.
Despite selling his own blood plasma twice a week to
raise money, Barrett fell more than $1,000 behind in
his payments and was jailed for failure to pay.
© 2014 Jason Blalock for Human Rights Watch

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