The Crime Report: Changing the Culture of Community Supervision
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According to Jenna Moll, Deputy Director of the Washington, D.C.-based Justice Action Network, the issue of technical violations may be one of the easiest problems to fix.
“The number-one thing that a state or probation system could do is throw out that standard set of conditions that they give to everyone,” Moll said in an interview.
According to a report by the United States Courts, a person on parole must comply with roughly 20 different conditions ordered by the court. These can include: residential restrictions, scheduled meetings with a probation/parole officer, drug testing, required counseling and treatment for addiction or mental illness, supervision fees, and association and contact restrictions.
Moll pointed out that a vast majority of these kinds of conditions are totally irrelevant to individual cases.
“If you have someone who has been arrested for parking fines, with no history of substance abuse, [and] no evidence of any addiction issues, whatsoever, forcing that person to go to weekly or monthly drug tests is a huge waste of time,” said Moll.