Augusta, Georgia has become an unwitting poster child for the abuses that plague America’s for-profit probation industry. The local courts’ relationship with a company called Sentinel Offender Services has fueled injustices shocking enough to generate headlines across the country and around the world. People guilty of the most trivial offenses have been put behind bars and left mired in debt because they cannot afford to pay extortionate company fees.
Despite the outcry, authorities in Richmond County – where Augusta is located – appear to have learned nothing. Yesterday, they awarded Sentinel a new contract and a raise.
Sentinel’s practices have landed Augusta at the center of a high-profile lawsuit now being considered by Georgia’s Supreme Court. The hometown paper’s politically conservative editorial board has labeled the whole privatized probation system “state-sanctioned indentured servitude.” Yet Sentinel’s new contract with Richmond County is a firm embrace of the dismal status quo; the handful of new provisions on oversight fall woefully short of what is needed.
Perhaps worst of all, the contract allows Sentinel to increase the already steep fees it charges people who are only on probation because they need extra time to pay down a traffic ticket or misdemeanor fine. These probationers tend to be in dire economic situations, and company fees add significantly to their debts.
Sentinel’s only job in these “pay only” cases is to collect money – the probationers are not even required to meet with a probation officer. But the new contract lets Sentinel charge these “pay only” probationers a monthly fee almost as high as the one it charges offenders who are under the strict supervision of a company probation officer.
It’s clear there is an urgent need for state governments that allow private probation to step in and set up a proper regulatory framework. Georgia happens to be the only state with at least the basic foundations of an oversight system in place. With a bit of legislative legwork – like reasonable limits on supervision fees, stricter oversight of probation companies, and limits on the services courts can ask companies to perform – Georgia could become a model for other states instead of a cautionary tale.
There’s at least some reason to hope that this could happen. Earlier this year, Governor Nathan Deal vetoed a deplorable bill that would have given away the store to probation companies while demanding nothing in return. There’s a real appetite for a new legislative effort – not least from state judges who are tired of the legal uncertainty the debacle in Augusta has created for all of them. After Georgia’s November elections, the legislature should get down to work and fix this mess once and for all.
