“It’s still in its infancy stage,” said Trey King, Director of Rutherford County Probation and Recovery Services, as he presented The RCPRS’ six-month progress report to the county’s Public Safety Committee on Oct. 24 in the historic courthouse on the square.

King’s report detailed the finances of our half-year-old, county-run probation department that county officials, including the commissioners of the Public Safety Committee and Mayor Ernest Burgess, voted into existence to replace the county’s former privately-owned, user-funded, for-profit probation department, Providence Community Corrections (PCC).

PCC was contracted by Rutherford County officials to handle the influx of misdemeanor and traffic violations going through the Rutherford County court system in 2006. They operated the probation department for the Rutherford County courts until these Rutherford County officials voted to end their contract with PCC in February 2016, after a federal lawsuit was filed against PCC, Rutherford County and nine former employees of PCC in October 2015 on behalf of seven former PCC probationers of Rutherford County.

According to the federal lawsuit, Rutherford County, PCC, and PCC’s nine former employees are charged with extorting money from probationers through threats of jail time, which violates the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act (RICO), or the Organized Crime Act of 1970, an abuse-of-power charge stating they abused the legal process by “seek[ing] arrest warrants and probation revocation judgments with an ulterior motive to collect additional fees,” which furthermore violates the U.S. Constitution’s 14th amendment, or the due process amendment, as PCC’s contract with Rutherford County gave them financial interests that influenced their supposedly neutral, discretionary decision-making duties and capabilities while handling Rutherford County probationers. This resulted in the jailing of at least 13 indigent (monetarily poor) Rutherford County citizens who could not pay PCC’s probation fees and fines. Those 13 were released by Nashville Federal Judge Kevin Sharp in December of 2015.

“[RCPRS has] taken a different approach to focus on the recidivism and trying to stop that. We’re here to help garner better jobs and really tackle the problem more so than focus on the collection of money. So, we’re just taking a different approach,” Trey King said while giving the six-month report at the Oct. 24 meeting.

On April 1, 2016, RCPRS began figuring out how to operate a probation department by using PCC’s model for running a probation department as their own model, according to Melissa Harrell, the Rutherford County Circuit Court Clerk who oversees the money side of RCPRS. That PCC-based RCPRS specifically includes charging the $45 a month probation supervision fees collected first and foremost as Rutherford County’s own profit. Those payments have been documented on legally-proven faulty clerical management software; the county won a lawsuit against (and was awarded a refund from) the software’s production company, which was blamed for the county’s failure to pay litigation taxes when the Tennessee Department of Revenue discovered the oversight during a 2015 audit. That faulty software will not be replaced by a better software already in use by the county’s Chancery Court until the end of June 2017, according to Mayor Ernest Burgess. The current software runs on dated hardware that prints probationers’ and clerks’ filing receipts on dot-matrix printers, with attached, non-itemized receipts from RCPRS county clerks’ desk calculators  showing each probationer’s account balance.

However, in the face of the federal lawsuit’s allegations that scare tactics were used to intimidate probationers into paying their fines and fees, RCPRS has slightly tweaked the PCC-based model by appearing more pleasant to work with than PCC. RCPRS also supplies information for drug and alcohol counseling centers outside of Rutherford County, if requested, and post employment information on their tack boards. The cosmetic touch-up also masks how the fees that PCC took as their profit are still collected by RCPRS, but as the county’s profit. This all happens under the guidance and instruction of some of the very same ex-PCC employees that are named in the federal lawsuit, though, such as Tiarra Smith, who is currently employed by RCPRS and acting as one of their probation officers, managing Rutherford County probationers’ cases, including mine. Smith, while spearheading some of the positive changes of RCPRS, has supplied instruction to the RCPRS Circuit Court Clerk pertaining to finance collection in my case on several occasions.

Speaking of the money, “The six-month report: this is from April to September,” King stated to the Public Safety Committee, “The total expenditures [or RCPRS’ bills, salaries, pensions paid into, building maintenance, etc. that makes up their budget] for that six-month time period would be $618,602.72. The total collections as far as program fees, drug screen fees, SCRAM [electronic monitoring] fees, supervision fees [all of the services RCPRS provides for the county] for that same period of time [is] $416,974.95, for a difference of $201,627.77,” meaning RCPRS fell short of its mark by $201,627.77.

However, in the Probation and Recovery Services Report in May 2016 covering the period of April 2016, when RCPRS began, the 2016 fiscal year budget was $344,504.00, meaning its budget almost doubled in half the time ($344,504 to $618,602.72 within the six-month period of April to September). Had they stayed on course with the May 2016 budget, the six-month report would have shown RCPRS collections within that time frame resulting in a money surplus of $72,470.95, instead of costing the county $201,627.77.

“Now when we add in court costs, fines, fees and everything else along with those items that we collected [like money collected for misdemeanor and traffic violation fines outside of RCPRS by the Circuit Court Clerk’s Office at the judicial building on the square],” King continued, “The grand total is $1,480,508.84. You subtract the $618,602.72 total expenditures, that gives [Rutherford County] a surplus amount of $861,906.12.”

The figure offered by King, however impressive it may sound, does not alter the fact that the probation and recovery services’ significant budget expansion still resulted in a more than $200,000 shortfall regardless of which budget number you look at. The existence of RCPRS, simply put, cost the county $201,627.77.

In the May Public Safety Committee meeting minutes, it was stated there were 3,308 people reporting to probation in the county and there are currently 3,400 people on probation, with 174 cases added in September, according to King.

There are roughly 3,400 Rutherford County citizens at any given time who are adding to the of RCPRS’ collections total of $416,974.95 that King was referring to.

On Oct. 25, 2016, Rob, one of the Circuit Court clerks at the RCPRS desk, explained to a probationer in line that there will be a $25 minimum monthly payment beginning on Nov. 15. When the probationer asked the clerk if failing to meet this new minimum would result in his probation being violated, he did not reply.

“What happens if [probationers] don’t meet the payment plan? What’s your procedures then?” Commissioner Doug Shafer asked King the previous day at the Oct. 24 Public Safety Committee meeting.

“It is my understanding with the clerk’s office,” King replied, “after a period of time—I don’t know if it’s 90 days, or six months, the clerk has the right to suspend driver’s licenses, if they do have that, so the clerk can take that and suspend it, or the clerk can begin to initiate, I believe it’s after a year, proceedings to bring forth a seal of judgment to either collect through property, or other tangible assets that the individual may have in view of judgment.”

“What if they don’t have anything? No driver’s license. No nothing. Living with Momma,” asked commissioner Steve Pearcy, to which King replied, “Then we don’t really have a whole lot. We can garnish wages, if they ever get a job. We can do that. But it does preclude them from ever obtaining a driver’s license in the future until all these fines and fees are paid for. And it’s hard.”

The monthly minimum introduces a slippery slope, as PCC also forced monthly payments on their probationers, a process that set into motion the PCC probation officers’ frustrations with probationers who did not meet that minimum payment in the time they were allotted.

Again, some of those probation officers who enforced those monthly minimums effectively enough to become defendants in the federal lawsuit are now working for RCPRS.

“I really think it’ll be out, like, three years before we get a real good look at everything,” commissioner Joe Gourley said before he moved to approve the six-month probation report as is, “because we all know the court system moves very slowly, and so, to get a true look at how many people come back into the system, I think we could revisit this three years from when we implemented this program and really begin to see what we’re doing. We’re just going to have to be patient.”

In the meantime, Trey King also oversees Rutherford County’s Drug Court, DUI Court, Veteran’s Court, and, most recently, the Mental Health Court that he says might be up and running by the end of the year. If an offender’s case meets the criteria to go through those avenues, they’re there with available therapists to determine the cause of the offender’s problem, which RCPRS does not do. There is also an RCPRS-free payment plan arrangement handled by Circuit Court clerks Beth Becker and Debbie Goodwin that began June 13, 2016, to pay towards misdemeanors and traffic violations.

The federal lawsuit against Rutherford County, PCC, and nine ex-PCC employees can be seen in its entirety here.

Well, having a good look at this convoluted, shoot-from-the-hip, policy-driven bureaucracy has made me sit back and wonder how in the hell I got into all of this. . . .