I meet with many clients whose primary concern is, am I going to jail? Am I going to lose my license? How will this affect my job? And I get that. Those are good questions to ask. But I usually follow up with a piece of information they may not have thought about yet, and that’s probation.
Most cases in the criminal justice system end up this way because the jails and prisons are too full.
Probation has a wide range of possibilities. If you get something minor, you might get unsupervised probation. It is just a promise to the court that you will stay out of trouble.
That’s the easiest. We’re almost all on unsupervised probation because we’ve all promised to stay out of trouble. You go on, live your life.
On the other end of the spectrum, you have full probation through the Probation and Parole Office. In the beginning, that is potentially very invasive. You meet with an officer; they assign you specific things to do. You must go through drug and alcohol treatment, maybe urinalysis tests to ensure you’re not using drugs.
They tend to be much more intense. That can last anywhere from 3 months, and they put you on call-in status through the conclusion of your term. So if you get a five-year term, you’ll meet with your probation officer every week. We want to minimize that, so a good attorney will try to shift that during the negotiation process.
Right in the middle is a newer thing that has become much more prevalent in the last five to 10 years. Private companies like Community Alternative Sentencing Program and Judicial Services of the Ozarks get paid to supervise probationers. It is an interesting conflict because you’re the one paying them. Do they work for the court, do they work for the client? That is all being worked out in the system.
Each case can end up in unsupervised probation, supervised probation with a private company, or Probation and Parole. The specific facts matter, and that’s why it’s essential to speak with an attorney with the knowledge and experience to paint a picture of your life in each scenario and the ability to fight for your best outcome.