Ada County is gearing up to take over the provision of misdemeanor probation services at the end of this contract term, which is September 30, 2012. Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to call or write to my Board to express your concerns and frustrations with this program.
Thank you, also, to the Boise Guardian (www.boiseguardian.com) for focussing much-needed attention on this issue and for providing a forum to allow those people who are affected by it the opportunity to interact, provide information, or just vent.
Although I would have liked to see a thorough investigation take place before my colleagues renewed the ACMPS contract, we are at least now moving in the right direction. As I have mentioned several times on the Boise Guardian, I have never supported the concept of privatized misdemeanor probation or any corrections services but have never before had the necessary second vote to terminate the contract and provide the service in-house. I believe in limited governnment, but corrections-related services are properly handled by government to avoid the profit motive and problems that are allegedly occurring at ACMPS.
Early last week, I had gallbladder surgery, so please accept my apologies if you contacted me and I did not get back to you. I have read all my e-mail and listened to all of the voice mail messages I received, but admit that the timing of my surgery did not work well with the high volume of messages I received on this issue. I want to assure you that your concerns have been heard.
To all of the people who are currently on misdemeanor probation: Please understand that I have no authority over your individual case or situation. If you have complaints about the handling of your case by ACMPS, please contact your attorney and/or the judge on your case for assistance.
If you have evidence of a problem at ACMPS that you can document, such as positive UA’s at Global during a time when you can provide PROOF that you were clean, please send a copy of this information to the Board of Ada County Commissioners, 200 W. Front Street, Boise, 83702.
Thank you, again, to everyone for helping to change the way Ada County provides misdemeanor probation services.
Thank you for your update.I for one am hopeful that I will now be treated with some respect. This is the first time I’ve been in contact with the law and it’s been less that humanizing. I won’t go into that as I know and respect your boundries. I do have one question. Is the $25.00 increase going to stay? From what I’ve been told in class it was a last minute increase on her part to assure extra funds heading out the door? Nothing negitive intended, seems like everyone talks thinking they know it all, but noone has answers I can trust.
Thank you for your time, Have an awesome day,
Jeff
Hi Jeff! I would expect the $25 increase to remain in place. The legislature recently increased the maximum monthly fee from $50 to $75. Nancy did not take it the moment the allowable increase kicked in, but with all the controversy surrounding misdemeanor probation fees and whether that monthly maximum amount is supposed to pay for all UA tests and classes (or not) has caused some concern and likely led to decisions by misdemeanor probation providers around the state (including those programs run by the government) to increase the monthly fee. I hope you hang in there and successfully complete the program. Good luck! ~ Sharon 🙂
My son is also assigned to ACMPS for the first time. He has been treated terribly. He has complied with all requests by his PO and has paid all fines and has been drug tested by Global. His drug tests have all come back positive since November. He told his PO and his family he has not use any drugs or alcohol since his arrest. His PO violated his probation, and he had to pay more money to bail out and hire an attorney. His attorney advised him to have a drug test and hair follicle test immediatly. He went to another facility (not Global)those tests were all negative!!!(anothert $150.00 The last testing facility verifys that the hair follicle test shows that he has been negative for drug use for at least 90 days. WHAT IS GOING ON HERE!!!!!! He has a court date April 27th on the Probation Violation this is crazy, is anyone in the legal system not corupt? I hope we can find some honest people–hopefully the judge and our son’s attorney.
Ada county needs to ban togather and ask to lower monthly supervision. For the people who have petty crimes and are paying thousands of dollars for something as little as a open container, or any mistake someone mad and then continue over and over to keep that person in the system!