"[5] In 1841, John Augustus, a Boston cobbler, convinced a judge to grant him custody of a man convicted of public intoxication.
Impressed, the judge allowed Augustus to continue taking offenders into his custody for a probationary period as an alternative to imprisonment.
Overcrowded prisons have turned to community corrections to relieve their institutions—over five million people are currently serving probation or parole in the United States.
However, recidivism rates are high, and overworked probation officers have difficulty monitoring and managing so many probationers, many of whom were sentenced to community corrections simply due to overcrowding.
In 2012 Circuit Court Judge Hub Harrington in a well-documented case regarding private probation[8][1] characterized the contract between Judicial Correction Services, a private probation company and the Harpersville Municipal Court as an extortion racket which created a debtors' prison condoned by local elected officials.
[10] Human Rights Watch estimated that private probation firms in Georgia collect approximately $40 million a year from the people they supervise, mostly those who cannot afford to pay fines associated with low-level misdemeanors such as stop sign violations, illegal lane change, or trespassing.
[6] Georgia Legislature county-run probation services for misdemeanor cases were suspended and replaced with out-sourced private firms since c.1992.
[2] The private probation firm Sentinel Offender Services and the Richmond County State Court were accused of abuse and civil rights violations.
"In Augusta, Georgia numerous former probationers accuse Sentinel Offender Services of ignoring their inability to pay hundreds and even thousands of dollars in company fees.
"[14] Sentinel Offender Services no longer operates in the state of Georgia; however, the company, contracts and employees were bought by CSRA, who is also headquartered in Augusta.
[16] This private probation legislation, would have "effectively transferred supervision of approximately 25,000 misdemeanants from the State Department of Corrections to the individual counties."
[21] In September 2014, the ACLU brought suit against Michigan for imprisoning a woman who had fled to an emergency room after her boyfriend threatened her with a gun.
"[24] In May 2014 Bob Jones, police and crime commissioner for the West Midlands, called the controversial scheme to use the private probation industry as "reckless."
Since the 1970s in Texas there have been a number of offender-funded initiatives designed to increase county probation services by making probationers pay for a large part of their own supervision.
[27] According to a National Institute of Justice 1992 paper, Probation administrators in Texas have implemented a number of innovations to increase revenue: linking fee collections to staff performance, giving judicial priority to fee collections, instituting a strong no-waiver policy, and strictly enforcing payment.
To collect a higher proportion of fees, in the 1980's the Texas Legislature introduced additional measures such as automatic assessments, computerized tracking, and increased State contributions.
These authors note several benefits of fee collection: saving time through automation, providing another avenue for casework, and expanding probation services into other areas.Since the 1970s, the Texas State Legislature has enacted a number of initiatives designed to help county probation departments increase their total revenues by requiring probationers to pay for a substantial proportion of their own supervision costs.
"[12] Others argue that the financial interests of for-profit probation companies may lead to a deterioration of services or to corruption, both of which would disrupt the needs of offenders and communities.
In one example, a member of the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles was convicted on public corruption charges for accepting a bribe from a private probation agency.