ATLANTA — The Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision Monday concluding that it is legal for local courts to contract with private companies to supervise offenders on probation for minor violations.
The court agreed with the trial court judge that sentences cannot be extended for failure to pay monitoring fees, a process lawyers call tolling. By law, misdemeanor sentences are capped at 12 months.
And in a key provision, the court also found that, while there is a valid contract with Richmond County, there was not one with Columbia County when five probationers filed suit.
The decision stems from a high-profile lawsuit by people serving probation in the two counties for misdemeanors. They objected to extra fees charged by Sentinel Offender Services for the electronic bracelets they had to wear and for being subject to re-arrest for failure to pay them. The justices closed the door on re-arrest but left open garnishment of wages and liens against property like bank accounts as ways probation companies can seek what they claim is owed them.
Both sides had been unhappy with the outcome of their trial under Superior Court Judge Daniel Craig, and both appealed to the state’s highest court. The individuals were hoping the Supreme Court would find the use of private probation companies unconstitutional, which would have had a major effect statewide since the state Department of Corrections stopped providing supervision services to counties for misdemeanors in 2000.
Sentinel is the largest probation company operating in the state.
The opinion, written by Chief Justice Hugh Thompson, showed the justices weren’t immune to the complaints reported about Sentinel workers.
“Accordingly, while we are concerned by the allegations made and evidence presented in these cases, we agree with the trial court that most of the alleged injuries suffered by the plaintiffs are not a consequence of the privatization of probation services per se, but rather result from wrongful acts allegedly committed by Sentinel employees,” he wrote.
The lead attorney for the individuals who sued was generally pleased with most of the decision. Now, said Jack Long of the Augusta-based firm Tucker Long, the 130,000 or so outstanding warrants for similar outstanding fees to various probation companies against people across Georgia should be immediately withdrawn, he said.
“There are private probation companies all over the state just as abusive as Sentinel,” he said.
Long said that many of the people involved were put on probation originally because they didn’t have enough cash on hand to pay fines for speeding tickets, fighting or similar minor offenses. Each month while on probation, they paid a little toward their fines and they paid fees for the monitoring company. Once the 12 months sentence was complete, they thought they had satisfied all requirements and were surprised, sometimes years later when they were arrested, to discover outstanding warrants for some disputed amount.
One woman was walking her dog when a police officer searching for someone else asked her for identification. The officer arrested her after a computer check turned up the outstanding warrant for $160, according to Long.
“These people who had thought they had finished everything they were supposed to do, and unbeknownst to them, they had these warrants outstanding,” he said.
The Supreme Court ordered the cases sent back to Judge Craig to consider them individually instead of as one class-action lawsuit. Long said those who were arrested will pursue their claims but that he hopes a new class-action case can be assembled for those who only suffered financial losses because they’re far less than what the legal fees would amount to.
