From an article about a man arrested for killing two children:
"Sylvester, on probation for a drug arrest in Harris County when his children vanished, also is accused of failing to abide by conditions imposed on him by a state court after he was granted deferred adjudication.
Yet the Harris County Community Supervisions and Corrections Department never filed a motion to revoke his probation until after he was arrested June 17 on traffic warrants and officially named a suspect in his children's disappearance, court records show."
This must be one of those cases in which we shouldn't be sending someone to prison for "technical" violations. Where are the politicians that put pressure on these probation officers to hide the violations from the judge? Think this will remind the Legislature that probation violations are serious?
John, John, John ... those were just "administrative" violations. Clearly, Mr. Sylvester was just someone "we" (the court system) were "mad" at, not someone to be "afraid of." He had no business being revoked. In fact, he probably shouldn't have even been under supervision, seeing as how it was just for a lil' ol' drug case -- and we all know how Harris Co. is too hard on drug offenders.
John, this is exactly why the Legislature, in its wisdom, decided to shorten felony probations and encourage early termination of probations -- so that "non-violent offenders" like Mr. Sylvester would not be revoked even if they committed new offenses
As you can see, the state realized substantial savings by not acting on his violations. This is, in fact, a success story!
Posts: 2429 | Location: TDCAA | Registered: March 08, 2002
"We do want to be firm and serious with these people on their probation violations," said Whitmire. "But we also need to change the attitude in some quarters that our purpose is to catch probationers instead of working with them to be successful."
Judges in Harris County vary in their severity of dealing with those technical violations, with one judge having a policy of revoking probation if an offender is 15 minutes late to a meeting with a probation officer, Whitmire said.
He said the Legislature may need to write standards for judges to follow when considering whether to revoke probation.
We could easily eliminate the issue of "technical violations" of probations if we would simply eliminate the "technical conditions" of probation. Just use the honor system or what if we let the defendant set their conditions of probation - kind of like a self-paced educational system?
Posts: 261 | Location: Lampasas, Texas, USA | Registered: November 29, 2007
Sure, being "Smart on Crime" means enduring a few extra murders, many more rapes, even more burglaries, thefts, etc. And sure, we all deplore that. But let's not lose sight of the Big Picture. Being Smart on Crime lowers the incarceration rate. And our incarceration rate (2nd highest in the US)is what makes us look like a bunch of cowboys in the eyes of the NY Times Editorial Board, George Soros, most Western Europeans, and all other right thinking, cool people everywhere.
Hopefully there won't be an over reaction to this event, and next session even more Smart on Crime legislation can be passed. With enough far-sighted leadership in our legislature, perhaps Texas will reach the same status of being "cool" as Sweden, which has the lowest incarceration rate in the E.U., and the highest crime rate.
You know what I like about probation? The flexibility. I love it when a defendant misses their scheduled time to report, but as long as that defendant makes it to the probation office by 4pm on the last day of the month, the probation office considers that complying with 'report as directed monthly' provision of the supervision order. It's nice we let them show up whenever they want. That way they can plan to be clean and avoid a techincal violation of a positive UA.
