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The Daily Tar Heel

Probation system set for signi?cant reform

Through new legislation and an allotment in the state budget, the N.C. General Assembly laid the groundwork this summer for mending the state’s probation system.

The next step, at least until the legislature resumes in May, is to implement the changes and spend the money as mandated.

“I see no reason that it won’t go forward. There aren’t a lot of other things to be done,” said Sen. John Snow, D-Cherokee, chairman of the appropriations on justice and public safety committee. “I think that the reform is in place and now it’s just a matter of implementation and carrying out the reform.”

Almost $1.4 million was allotted in the budget for adding 18 positions. These people will be the immediate supervisors of the probation officers handling cases.

In addition, legislation was passed to permit probation officers to have access to probationers’ juvenile records, to allow police officers to search probationers without a search warrant and to allow probationers to be transferred to lesser supervision levels if they are deemed a lesser threat.

The reforms stem from suggestions in recent state and federal audits that revealed an overtaxed system that failed to provide adequate supervision of probationers.

The audits were prompted by the 2008 killings of former UNC Student Body President Eve Carson and Duke University graduate student Abhijit Mahato — the suspects charged with their deaths were both already on probation.

Although the Department of Correction did receive some cuts — among them the elimination of 14 judicial district offices, whose work will be picked up by the remaining offices — they now have some of the tools to make necessary changes, said Keith Acree, Department of Correction public affairs director.

“We’re certainly happy with what we got. We did actually get new resources when most agencies didn’t get anything,” he said.

The budget allotment and new legislation will require significant reorganization within the department, Acree said.

Meanwhile, the probation system is shifting its approach to classifying offenders, relying more on their “true risk” rather than their criminal conviction for determining their supervision level, he said.

“The reforms that we made — I think they very well address (problems) that probation was having,” Snow said. “I can’t think of a lot of things that we didn’t do.”


Contact the State & National Editor at stntdesk@unc.edu.

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