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	For-Profit Probation Tramples Rights of Poor by Chris Albin-Lackey Human Rights Watch USA   February 2014   Every year, US courts sentence several hundred thousand misdemeanor offenders to probation overseen by private companies that charge their fees directly to the probationers. Often, the poorest people wind up paying the most in fees over time, in what amounts to a discriminatory penalty. And when they can’t pay, companies can and do secure their arrest.   The 72-page report, “Profiting from Probation: America’s ‘Offender-Funded’ Probation Industry,” describes how more than 1,000 courts in several US states delegate tremendous coercive power to companies that are often subject to little meaningful oversight or regulation. In many cases, the only reason people are put on probation is because they need time to pay off fines and court costs linked to minor crimes. In some of these cases, probation companies act more like abusive debt collectors than probation officers, charging the debtors for their services.   “Many of the people supervised by these companies wouldn’t be on probation to begin with if they had more money,” said Chris Albin-Lackey, senior researcher on business and human rights at Human Rights Watch. “Often, the poorer people are, the more they ultimately pay in company fees and the more likely it is that they will wind up behind bars.”   Companies refuse to disclose how much money they collect in fees from offenders under their supervision. Remarkably, the courts that hire them generally do not demand this information either. Human Rights Watch estimates that, in Georgia alone, the industry collects a minimum of US$40 million in fees every year from probationers. In other states, disclosure requirements are so minimal that is not possible even to hazard a guess how much probation companies are harvesting from probationers in fees.   Human Rights Watch research in Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama revealed numerous egregious cases that illustrate the abuses related to outsourcing probation supervision as it is practiced today.   In Augusta, Georgia, a man who pled guilty to shoplifting a US$2 can of beer and fined US$200 was ultimately jailed for failing to pay more than US$1,000 in fees to his probation company. At the time he was destitute, selling his own blood plasma twice a week to raise money.   In another Georgia town, a company probation officer said she routinely has offenders arrested for non-payment and then bargains with their families for money in exchange for the person’s release.   In Alabama, the town of Harpersville shut down its entire municipal court after a judge slammed the municipality and its probation company for running what he called a “judicially sanctioned extortion racket.”   The Mississippi Delta town of Greenwood, an impoverished community of 15,000, had more than 1,200 people on probation with the private firm Judicial Corrections Services as of August 2013. Many were guilty only of traffic offenses. The town’s municipal judge told Human Rights Watch that “maybe one or two” of those had warrants out for their arrest. The real figure was close to 300.   These cases are not mere aberrations. Not all company probation officers behave unethically, but they are all subject to perverse financial incentives that encourage abusive behavior. And courts that view probation companies as an easy way to boost collections have troubling incentives not to ask hard questions about the tactics those companies employ.   Probation companies operate on an “offender-funded” basis that is financially appealing to many courts and local governments. They offer to provide probation supervision for low-level, misdemeanor offenders at no cost to the taxpayer. Instead, their contracts stipulate that judges should order probationers to pay them various fees as a condition of their sentence of probation. Many companies’ profits are entirely dependent on their ability to collect these fees from probationers.   In Bearden v. Georgia, the US Supreme Court has ruled that a person on probation cannot be jailed simply because they cannot afford to pay a criminal fine. But many courts effectively delegate the responsibility of determining whether an offender can afford to pay fines and company fees to their probation companies. This presents a clear conflict of interest because company profits, along with the quarterly bonuses of some company probation officers, depend entirely on their ability to collect fees.   “Probation companies have a financial stake in every single one of the cases they supervise,” Albin-Lackey said. “Their employees are the last people who should be entrusted with determining whether an offender can afford to pay company fees.”   http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/02/05/us-profit-probation-tramples-rights-poor http://www.hrw.org/news-all/668 Visit the related web page
	Sri Lankan security forces destroyed evidence of war crimes, report claims by Public Interest Advocacy Centre, agencies   February 2014   Public Interest Advocacy Centre investigated allegations of widespread human rights violations in final months of civil war, reports Helen Davidson for The Guardian.   Accusations that Sri Lankan security forces destroyed evidence of mass civilian killings are among allegations of “flagrant and reckless” violations of human rights committed in the final months of the civil war, according to a new report.   The Public Interest Advocacy Centre (Piac) engaged leading experts on areas including criminal law, international criminal law, and forensics to investigate the multitude of serious allegations from the final months of Sri Lanka’s civil war in 2008-2009. It called for an independent, international inquiry as the only way to achieve full accountability, ahead of the March deadline for the Sri Lankan government to report back to the UN Human Rights Council.   “This report describes command and control structures so well-established that criminal responsibility for certain crimes if proven at trial could lead to convictions of senior military commanders and Sri Lankan government officials, as well as senior surviving members of the [Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam] LTTE,” it said.   The report, Island of Impunity by Piac’s International Crimes Evidence Project (ICEP) found that government forces were behind the vast majority of alleged war crimes, and heard evidence that suggests the Sri Lankan government may have deliberately and systematically sought to exhume bodies from mass graves in a bid to hide evidence of the mass killings.   ICEP’s witness alleged members of the Sri Lankan police force and army were directly implicated in the destruction of mass graves containing the remains of hundreds, and in some cases thousands of men, women and children after the conflict.   “This witness believes that senior [security forces] officials knew that graves were being identified for the purpose of exhumation, and permanent destruction, over a period of more than a year,” said the report, which said there was an “urgent need” for further investigation.   CEO of Piac, Edward Santow, told Guardian Australia that its investigations also found strong evidence of well-aired claims that Sri Lankan forces attacked areas which they had encouraged civilians to take shelter in.   “What the Sri Lankan government did was it created what were called no-fire zones - areas where civilians, and particularly Tamils, were encouraged to congregate and the very clear implication was that they would be safe from attack,” said Santow.   “However our analysis of what was on the public record and our further new evidentiary material shows that there were attacks, artillery bombardments, on key parts of the no-fire zones, including on hospitals that were clearly marked as hospitals.”   The situation was “exacerbated” by the presence of LTTE forces in the area, and the investigation found strong evidence that civilians were used by Tamil forces as human shields.   “We’re very concerned about that as well, and those allegations, if proven, could also constitute war crimes or crimes against humanity,” said Santow.   Allegations of rape and sexual violence by Sri Lankan authorities continued well after the end of the conflict with one witness claiming she was raped by police in April 2012.   It’s also alleged members of Sri Lankan forces and committed rape and sexual violence during screening processes and interrogations, in detention facilities, camps and government hospitals – conduct which could amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.   The report also found a need for further investigation of “credible allegations” that Tamil forces forcibly recruited child soldiers, and strong evidence of extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances.   “What we’ve done is very methodically tried to follow the evidence and take it wherever it leads. The findings or conclusions one might draw from this is that there are very credible allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity both against the Sri Lankan government and also against members of the LTTE,” said Santow.   “We know from history that in order to have a lasting peace and reconciliation there needs to be full accountability for atrocities that occur in civil war. That full accountability hasn’t occurred yet and it seems that the only way in which that could occur is to have a full independent international inquiry into these issues.”   * Access the report via the link below. Visit the related web page
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