Private probation

Private probation is the contracting of probation, including rehabilitative services and supervision, to private agencies. These include non-profit organizations and for-profit programs. The Salvation Army's misdemeanor probation services initiated in 1975, condoned by the state of Florida, is considered to be among the first private probation services. The private probation industry grew in 1992, when "local and county courts began outsourcing misdemeanor probation cases to private companies to alleviate pressure on overburdened state probation officers."

Proponents of privatization argue that by requiring probationers to post a bond in guarantee of good behavior, probationers have an incentive to comply with the terms of probation, while incurring no cost to taxpayers. While the specialization of private probation agencies means that the services provided can be attuned to probationers’ needs if there is adequate legal aid provided to the probationer. In ideal conditions, privatization can be of superior quality to comparable public services. Advocates point out that private probation is not always for profit, and is often in the hands of community organizations whose primary motivation is not profit, but social good.

Opponents such as the ACLU argue that private probation companies are profiting off of poverty and devastating communities to a much greater extent than publicly run probation. In The New York Times, Thomas B. Edsall notes that "The more commercialized fee collection and probation services get, the more the costs of these services are inflicted on the poor."

In 1841, John Augustus, a Boston cobbler, convinced a judge to grant him custody of a man convicted of public intoxication. The man would have been incarcerated, otherwise. The judge agreed, and instead, Augustus paid the man's fine and took him in. Augustus returned with the drunkard three weeks later for an evaluation. The judge perceived the man to be sober and respectable, and Augustus had found him a job. Impressed, the judge allowed Augustus to continue taking offenders into his custody for a probationary period as an alternative to imprisonment. Augustus took in over a thousand offenders, the majority of whom never returned to the criminal justice system. Augustus’s method became popular, and was therefore implemented by Massachusetts as a public alternative to incarceration, and later by the other states in the United States. This slowly replaced private, voluntary probation such as that practiced by Augustus.

...
Wikipedia