[Part 1 and Part 2 of this series were published in October]
Just about everyone who makes it out of Georgia’s prisons has to serve time on probation. The norm for felony convictions in the state is a “split sentence,” where the time you spend in prison is only the first phase of your punishment. Christy, for example, will complete her 14-year prison sentence in early 2025, upon which she’ll begin serving her 16 years on probation.
While parole is a form of early release from prison, probation—under more traditional sentencing practices, anyway—is ostensibly a jail-alternative that avoids incarcerating someone in the first place. During a probation sentence you’re still under correctional control, but serving it out in the community rather than in jail or prison.
Nearly 200,000 people in Georgia are on felony probation. That’s a higher proportion than in any other state, and about three times higher than the national average. Elsewhere, felony probation usually lasts around two years; most states have caps that keep it under five years. Georgia has no caps.
You can spend up to four months in a Georgia county jail if you fall behind on your probation fines and fees, and up to two years in jail for any other technical violation—meaning you were arrested not for violating a law, but rather a condition of your probation. No matter how unjust the circumstances, most people end up signing a waiver stating that they’re guilty so they can take whatever deal is offered. Trying to fight it just drags out the time spent sitting in jail, and that time does not necessarily count toward your probation.
In some ways, the probation system is more insidious.
The clock stops the moment you’re arrested, and you only get it back if a judge or hearing officer decides to release you with credit for time served. For many, probation is such that every couple of years the state lengthens their sentence by a couple of months. Georgia keeps people on probation their whole lives this way.
For Christy, who’s currently sitting in jail on a technical violation of her parole—not probation—not signing the waiver makes sense. She has only a few months left on her sentence, and is safer staying where she is than being sent back into the prison system. But this situation is not common, and like thousands of others across the state she’ll be navigating the conditions of probation many times longer than for parole.
Probation is thought of as less serious than parole because it’s associated with jail rather than prison, but in some ways it’s the more insidious system of the two. It follows people into middle or old age, clawing away at their lives a few pieces at a time—four months in jail here, eight months there, and so on.
After their first year on probation some people are moved to unsupervised status, where they’re not assigned to a probation officer and more or less left alone unless they catch a new charge. And since 2021, people on felony probation in Georgia can petition for early termination after three years, provided they meet certain conditions. But any decrease in supervision is rarely considered for anyone on a sex offender registry, meaning these are unlikely for Christy and the many other trans women across the state being punished for survival sex work.
So many people are on probation in Georgia that the state has Probation Detention Centers.
Because the sex offender registry adds special conditions to probation, for the next 16 years Christy can be thrown back in jail for entirely legal conduct like missing curfew, driving alone or renting a post-office box that her probation officer didn’t approve.
Though the United States Constitution does not allow people to be punished more than once for the same conviction, under Georgia law that’s exactly what happens. Christy was 19 when she was arrested with another trans sex worker who was 17; had they been the same age this might have been a misdemeanor. After two years in county jail and then 11 years in the men’s prison system, she’s now in county jail again because under Georgia’s criminal-legal system she can be arrested for getting her tits out while inside her own home. Which will be just as true on probation as on parole.
Probation is not an alternative to incarceration. It’s a deferment, an extension, a way of ensuring that anyone under correctional control stays there. It’s a mechanism for keeping people in poverty; nationally, the majority of people on probation have incomes under $20,000 a year.
So many people are on probation in Georgia that the state has seven Probation Detention Centers—”highly structured minimum-security facilit[ies] with regimented schedules that include supervised, unpaid work in surrounding communities.” They’re operated by the Georgia Department of Corrections. People can be sent there because their probation was revoked, but they can also be sent there directly from sentencing. Remember, this is not incarceration. This is an alternative.
Image (cropped) via Georgia Department of Corrections/YouTube