Trial Court-Administration and Oversight of Probation Supervision Fee Assessments

This is a State Auditor review of how the Trial Court handled monthly probation supervision fees during part of 2012 and 2013.

“The Office of the State Auditor undertook this audit to review the Trial Court’s administration and oversight of probation supervision fee (PSF) assessments.”

Auditors wanted to see whether courts had a good process for assessing, waiving, collecting, and monitoring these probation fees.

“Does the Trial Court have an adequate process in place to document the assessment, waiver, and collection of PSFs?”

If courts do not follow the rules, some people may avoid required payments or community service, and the state and public-service organizations may lose out.

“As a result, courts may be allowing some offenders not to fulfill the terms and conditions of their probation; PSF assessments may go uncollected, meaning that the Commonwealth loses revenue it depends on; and nonprofit/public agencies that depend on this community service may not be receiving it.”

For residents, this is about fairness, public money, and whether community service ordered by courts is actually tracked and completed.

“As a result, court locations cannot readily determine how many community-service hours are owed, what community service amounts to in dollars, and whether probationers will be able to fulfill the requirements of court orders on schedule.”

The Auditor concluded that the Trial Court had system-wide problems with enforcing fee rules and tracking community service, but the Trial Court began taking steps to fix some of them.

“Overall, however, we believe that the actions taken by the Trial Court were responsive to our concerns and should help address this matter.”

The audit covered 16 court locations that represented a meaningful share of probationers and fee collections, including $7.5 million in collections during the audit period.

“As part of our audit, we also conducted on-site audit testing at 16 Trial Court locations that together accounted for 12,470 (16%) of Trial Court probationers as of December 31, 2013, and $7.5 million (23%) of the $32.8 million in PSF collections transferred to the Office of the State Treasurer during the audit period.”

A probation supervision fee is a monthly charge that many people on probation must pay unless the court properly waives it, often requiring community service instead.

“A PSF is a monthly fee that judges are statutorily required to assess for a criminal offender placed on probation, to be paid for the length of his/her probation term.”