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: Grits for Breakfast

When probation is a "free ride," it means local leaders have failed

By Gritsforbreakfast

On Thursday at the Texas Public Policy Foundation's briefing, I heard Bexar County DA Susan Reed describe offenders who receive probation sentences instead of jail as getting a "free ride," which always strikes me as an odd thing to say, though you hear it a lot (an audio of her remarks has been posted online). She made the comment to criticize a bill passed in 2003 (described here) requiring probation for first-time offenders for low-level drug possession.Probation, or "community supervision," doesn't have to be weak and ineffective, even if that's how she ran things when she was a judge (and how many counties operate). Given that more than three times as many Texans are on probation as locked up in prison, if it's really true that probation is a "free ride," it speaks more to the failures of folks like her running the criminal justice system than it discredits the idea of supervising offenders in the community...continue to full post

Full post as published by Grits for Breakfast on January 13, 2008 (boomark / email).