Ben* is about to parole out of Georgia Department of Corrections (GDC) custody. His approved release address is with his brother, who has a house and a steady job and uses crack cocaine.
The situation has been precarious from the start. The first time a Department of Community Supervision (DCS) officer stopped by the house, Ben’s brother did what many people who use drugs instinctively do when a cop knocks unexpectedly, and hid. Fortunately the officer was inclined to leave a note: Call to set a day for inspection prior to parole.
On parole, Ben will be subject to DCS stopping by for random searches whenever they want. He has a documented history of substance use, which DCS is obviously aware of. He isn’t willing to gamble his freedom on officers never suspecting that someone in the house uses crack. The fact that Ben’s in recovery doesn’t matter; he doesn’t have to use any drugs in order for his parole to be revoked over paraphernalia. So he’s decided on a pragmatic solution: Send his brother to jail.
“My brother is going to go to the same rehab program I did,” Ben told Filter. “I’ll drop a dime on him … let him sober up in county. I got no choice.”
In the wake of being booked into county jail, people lose everything. Cars. Furniture. Clothes. If the cops don’t take it, civilians will.
Ben’s logic may bend a bit in his favor, but it makes an uncomfortable amount of sense. He has no other release address, and can’t be released from GDC custody without one. If he goes back to prison he may never come out; his release date, without parole, is still a few decades away. So staying with his brother while his brother’s actively using isn’t an option, and neither is staying anywhere else.
Meanwhile, over the past few years his brother’s odds of a drug possession arrest seemed to have been increasing, and if that happens Ben needs to already be living with him. If he’s not, there will be no one to watch the house, and that’s not an option either.
In the wake of being booked into county jail, people lose everything. Cars. Furniture. Clothes. If the cops don’t take it, civilians will. Even the smallest household necessities get carried away on the waves of, Well, it’s not like they’re going to be using it now.
“It has been nerve-racking just holding my breath that he would still have the house when I make parole,” Ben said. “I’m down to the wire now… either I save us both or we both fall.”
So the best option Ben sees is that his brother is arrested while Ben is living with him, but it doesn’t happen at home. As long as it’s not there, or his car, there’s no reason GDC and DCS would hear about it. His brother won’t bond out; there’s no one left to post the bail. Conceivably he might be forced into abstinence during a stint in county jail, and the issue of the living together wouldn’t come up until it was his brother’s turn to have his release address inspected for suitability. They might let him live with someone who’d been convicted of a felony since it’s his house and their convictions weren’t related. By then house would have no drugs or paraphernalia, and they both move forward.It’s the kind of rationale that makes sense if you’ve learned from experience that all roads lead to prison.
“The thought of coming back to prison will keep me sober,” Ben said. “Prison saved me. It will save my brother as well.”
GDC Fiscal Report circa 2000
A parole revocation didn’t necessarily mean returning to prison. In the late 1990s, GDC often preferred that parolees—“especially those with drug problems”—go to a Parole Revocation Center (PRC).
In 2000 the state made a huge push to add thousands of prison beds, and thousands more “alternative beds” including at PRC. They were sort of their own diversion programs, in that parolees were diverted from going back to prison for years by incarcerating them in a PRC program for months. There were several back then. If a six-month substance use program wasn’t enough, “revoked parolees needing long-term substance recovery treatment” were sent to Homerville PRC. Whitworth PRC was touted as a “specialized, one of a kind center for parole revocators.”
These programs saw a lot of parolees who’d been doing well in all the ways that really mattered—housing, employment, reporting to their parole officer on time—but caught a technical violation. Perhaps they were caught driving without insurance, or stopped at a DUI checkpoint sober, but after curfew. Many parolees could wait in county jail until bed space opened up at a PRC, go work the program there for a couple of months, and be released back into the community on parolee status as before. A couple of months is still more than enough time to lose everything, but it beats losing everything and also going back into the prison system for years or decades.
Today PRC exist in name, popping up on the occasional bit of paperwork mapping out the GDC facilities division, but the state of Georgia no longer operates any. GDC fiscal reports indicate there was one left in 2017, and haven’t mentioned them since. The cost of incarcerating someone in a PRC program was the same as housing them in the prison system, give or take a few cents per day. But as “tough on crime” politics became more popular, PRC fell by the wayside. If your parole is revoked, no matter the reason, you can expect to max out your sentence.
Name has been changed for source’s protection
Image (cropped) via Georgia Department of Corrections
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