Mrs. Hall had gifts ready for each guest — pajamas for her mother, new boots for her two grown sons. Well before midnight, the party wound down, and Mrs. Hall, who had been drinking wine, got in the car with her husband to drive two guests home. She was 40 at the time, had zero points for bad driving on her license, and had never been in trouble with the law. That was about to change.
She was stopped for speeding, failed a breathalyzer test, and was charged with drunken driving. She pleaded guilty in exchange for entering a probation program under which, provided she followed the rules, she would avoid a conviction.
But over the next 18 months, Mrs. Hall would find herself in trouble again and again, though she committed no new crimes. She spent countless hours attending court and lost thousands of dollars in fees, legal costs and wages, as well as two jobs. The judge handling her case imposed conditions far harsher than the norm, then repeatedly called Mrs. Hall into court for violations like failing to ask permission before moving to a different unit in her apartment complex.
Ultimately Mrs. Hall spent more than a month in jail because she could not afford another $2,500 to bail herself out.
Mrs. Hall’s misdemeanor, one of more than a million drunken-driving arrests each year, is not one that would normally attract attention. No one was injured and no property was damaged, and most courts do not come down hard on first-time offenders in drunken-driving cases. Yet as more states turn to probation and parole as a means of reducing incarceration, her story shows how even a supposedly light punishment like probation can severely disrupt a working-class life and weigh heavily on its prospects.
While Mrs. Hall’s case is extreme, she is far from alone in struggling under the burden of an unusually strict or inappropriate probation, experts say. “There are a number of people around the country being put on probation that don’t really need to be on probation,” said Carl Wicklund, the executive director of the American Parole and Probation Association, a professional group. “It’s a bad use of resources, and it’s bad for the individual.” Nationally, only about two-thirds of probationers successfully complete their terms, according to federal data.
