No More CRV for Structured Sentencing Misdemeanants

Come December 1, dips will be the new dunks for Structured Sentencing misdemeanants. Since 2011, the rule for probation violations in North Carolina has been as follows. Revocation is permissible only for violations of the “commit no criminal offense” and “absconding” conditions. All other violations are considered “technical violations,” and the court may not revoke probation for them. Instead, the court may impose a period of “confinement in response to violation” (CRV) of 90 days for a felony or up to 90 days for a misdemeanor, or some other sanction aside from revocation (like a split sentence or electronic house arrest, for example). After a probationer has received two CRV periods, he or she may be revoked for any violation, including a technical violation. G.S. 15A-1344(d2). It’s a sort of “three strikes and you’re out” approach to minor violations. The thing is, hardly anyone ever gets to the third technical-violation strike. (Actually, not that many people even get to the second one.) Something else usually happens first. Either the person gets revoked for a new criminal offense or absconding, or the probation period expires, or the first CRV is a so-called “terminal CRV”—meaning that it either uses up the defendant’s entire suspended sentence or that the judge affirmatively terminates the probation after the first CRV period is served. Especially for misdemeanants, whose suspended sentences often are not any longer than 90 days to begin with, many if not most first CRVs are terminal. Realizing that the existing CRV model isn’t really [...]