Absconding from Probation

What does it mean to "abscond" from probation supervision? "Absconder" is not defined statutorily; rather, it is defined in Division of Community Corrections (DCC) policy as "an offender who is actively avoiding supervision by making his/her whereabouts unknown to the supervising officer." DCC makes a searchable list of all absconders available to the public here (click on the absconder tab at the top of the page, and you can search by last name or by county). Statewide, there are about 12,000 probationers who have absconded probation - about 10% of all supervised probationers. That's down from the 14,000 figure the News & Observer frequently cited in its "Losing Track" series, but obviously still a high number. One of the reasons the number stays so high is that district attorneys and DCC are disinclined to remove anyone from the list, even for cases that would have expired many years ago. Rightly so - as I'll discuss in a minute, there's no other way to retain jurisdiction over a probationer who might someday turn up. So, the 12,000-probationer list, which undoubtedly includes a good number of bad people "actively avoiding supervision," probably also includes a fair number of low-risk folks who might have changed addresses, moved out of the state, gotten married and changed names, been hospitalized, or died. Regardless, it's a bad situation for everyone, including court officials who have to explain why a handful of decades-old cases make it look like it takes 7 months to resolve the average probation violation. [...]