Misdemeanor Probation Services

The misdemeanor program offers legal and liability coverage and program financial collection reports to the judges, courts and clerks and county mayors. If requested by the courts the program provides: electronic monitoring (24 hour coverage), curfew checks, alcohol and drug screening, GED schools, psychological evaluations, monitoring of community service work, DUI school, self esteem and character development, domestic violence counseling and monitoring of victims, Tennessee Driving Improvement program, monitoring the collection of court costs and fines, monitoring the restitution paid to victims, job enhancement programs, monitoring job search and wage verification, and monitoring all conditions as ordered by the courts.

The program currently operates in 15 East Tennessee counties. The convicted misdemeanor offenders are sentenced to supervision as a suspended sentence, or as a suspended sentence in conjunction with incarceration, or periodic confinement.

History: The Misdemeanor Probation Program developed as a result of the efforts of the Honorable Judge James E. Beckner and Mr. Gordon Acuff, former ETHRA Executive Director. Beckner and Acuff identified a continuing need for supervised probation of offenders on a more intense level than authorized previously by the Tennessee Code Annotated. This need arose out of the change in reducing felonies to misdemeanor offenses by the 1989 Reducing Sentence Law. This unique program allowed for intense supervision of misdemeanor probationers for the first time in Tennessee history. Even more unique, the program was established to operate entirely without cost to the county, state or federal government or taxpayers.

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