In 2017, Philadelphia rapper Meek Mill was sentenced to two to four years in prison for technical violations. Celebrities, entertainers, and the media learned about how people on probation in Pennsylvania are regularly given long jail and prison sentences even when they haven’t committed a new crime. Six years after the uproar and lobbying by Mill and others like Jay-Z and Kevin Hart, Pennsylvania enacted Act 44 of 2023. Act 44 overhauled Pennsylvania’s probation laws by changing jail sentences for technical violators, providing opportunities for the automatic early review of probation, and to create relief for people who are only still on probation because they owe money.
Limiting jail sentences for technical probation violations
A technical violation of probation is when the person being supervised isn’t following the conditions of their probation. This is different from a convicted violation. A convicted violation means that the defendant got a new case and was convicted of a new crime.
Act 44 says that there is a presumption against giving a technical violator a jail or prison sentence. The law does this by limiting which technical violators can be sentenced to jail and by limiting how long those jail sentences can be. The Superior Court of Pennsylvania recently emphasized that very specific criteria have to be met before a technical violator can be eligible for a jail sentence. That same opinion explained that, even when a technical violator is given a jail sentence, there’s a cap on how much jail time they can be given.
For a first technical violation, the sentence is limited to a maximum of 14 days. A second technical, the sentence is capped at 30 days. After that second violation, the probation revocation sentence can be as long as the original statutory maximum sentence for the offense.
When a judge is calculating technical violations, they are supposed to count violations that were heard and resolved in court before the current violation hearing process was started. What that means is that probation officers can’t stack violations at a hearing and expect the court to give the longer sentence.
Changed expectations for probation conditions
Act 44 also made it clear that probation conditions need to be “individualized” and that they use the “least restrictive means” to help rehabilitate the person on probation. When a defendant is sentenced, the court is required to consider them as an individual and only give probation conditions that are tied to what that specific defendant needs to work on and what is justified by the type of offense. The change in the law also means that a court can’t include conditions that are more restrictive than the individual circumstances and facts of the case call for.
Probation review conferences
Something else the Meek Mill case brought attention to is the problem with long sentences of probation. Although people were always able to file a motion asking to end their probation early, this has been a process that usually involved a lawyer and was something that a defendant would have to initiate on their own. After Act 44, people with eligible sentences are entitled to have their probation reviewed after they’ve finished part of their sentence.
If a person was convicted of a misdemeanor case, they will be eligible for a probation review conference two years or halfway through their sentence, whichever comes first. For a felony case, the review conference happens four years or halfway through the sentence—again, whichever comes first.
Figuring out when a person is eligible when they are serving more than one sentence is slightly more complicated. If a person is serving a consecutive sentence and the sentences are related to the same criminal incident, then the amount of the sentence that needs to served depends on whether the most serious probation sentence was for a misdemeanor or a felony. If a person is serving consecutive sentences for unrelated criminal acts, then the person will have to serve four years of probation or half of the sentence, whichever comes first.
If a person was given a state sentence, then they have to complete at least 12 months of the probation sentence and will have an eligibility date that is 12 months earlier than their normal eligibility date as long as they didn’t violate their parole during those 12 months.
Administrative probation
As part of the new law, a person who is otherwise eligible for early termination of their probation after the Act 44 review conference but hasn’t finished paying restitution can have their case transferred to administrative probation. Administrative probation is when the defendant doesn’t have the conditions or the same reporting requirements but is still required to finish paying the restitution.
Key Takeaways:
- When a defendant is sentenced to probation, the court is required to consider the defendant’s individual rehabilitative needs and must use the least restrictive means of using conditions to rehabilitate the defendant.
- A sentence for a technical probation violation is presumed to not include jail or prison unless the probation violation court finds the specific criteria that the law says it has to find to justify a sentence of “total confinement”
- Certain people on probation are eligible to have automatic probation review conferences after they have completed two years or 50% of their probation sentence for misdemeanors and four years or 50% of their probation sentence for felonies