Tennessee revives intensive probation program after statewide demand

Justice A.A. Birch Building in Nashville, in which a Community Corrections program has operated. (Photo: Brad Freeman, Metropolitan Nashville General Sessions Court)

Three years after curtailing an intensive probation program, the Department of Correction is reviving Community Corrections as part of a last-ditch effort to keep offenders out of prison.

The state is taking bids from probation programs across Tennessee to resume supervision services to thousands of people on the brink of being sentenced to prison time. Requests for proposals are to be filed by April 14.

Department of Correction spokesperson Dorinda Carter declined to say whether the state is taking a new direction, only that probation services contracts were set to expire and bids were re-issued to provide “alternatives to incarceration.”

Gov. Bill Lee’s administration — despite orders from lawmakers to keep Community Corrections going because of its effectiveness — practically wrote the program out of existence with a request for proposals that required different guidelines. Vendors would have to offer either day reporting centers, outpatient treatment or a residential facility, and some weren’t prepared to make such a shift.

Davidson County Community Corrections keeps clients alive

Legislators also sent a strong message to correction officials at an August 2023 meeting that they wanted the program to be renewed, instead of shifting all offenders to the state’s probation program, which is considered understaffed and less effective. Lawmakers enacted the program in 1985 as a last-ditch effort to keep people who didn’t qualify for regular probation out of prison.

Republican Sen. Ed Jackson of Jackson has been working for three years to renew the program to allow Madison County’s Community Corrections to start serving probationers again.

“Ever since they did away with it in several counties across the state, every one of them has said we really need it back. It’s been effective, it’s been good for us, keeps some people out of jail, lets them stay out and work, be supervised locally instead of going to a correctional facility,” Jackson said.

The program cost $13.8 million when in full swing in 2022.