This morning Jamie Markham and I loaded a passenger van with a group of district court judges who had come to the SOG for a week-long orientation course. We hauled them (through the snow) over to the offices of Community Corrections on Yonkers Road in Raleigh. Jamie lectured while I drove. We took the judges over to probation headquarters so that in addition to learning about the law of probation from the expert (Jamie, obvi), they could meet, hear from, and question the people who set, write, and administer probation policy and who supervise probationers. The experience was amazing. Senior Policy Administrator Chad Owens and Justice Reinvestment Administrator George Pettigrew told the judges how Community Corrections (probation) carries out the directives of Justice Reinvestment and probation law generally, from the big-picture (risk assessment) to the granular (routine drug screening). They answered questions about how probation officers respond to probation violations of various types and explained mechanics such as how a defendant ordered to complete treatment at DART-Cherry is assessed for substance dependency and how the defendant actually gets to the facility. And the list goes on. Jessica Bullock, Chief Probation Parole Officer from District 10, passed around an electronic monitoring bracelet and described its features. Fun fact:Â The bracelets can talk to the wearer, telling them to, for example, to immediately contact their probation officer. She talked about how electronic monitoring might work for a defendant without a permanent address. And she engaged in a mock dialogue with a judge to [...]
Faculty Coordinators
