As Michigan criminal and DUI lawyers, my team and I know full-well that being placed on probation is a break from being put or kept in jail. In the real world, however, some people lose sight of this fact and go on to1` either do something they’re not supposed to, or DON’T do something they’re required to do while on probation. Then, they wind up facing a probation violation (PV). When that happens, the only thing that matters is, to put it bluntly, saving the client’s a$$.
That may sound raw, but the cold truth is that anyone who has to go back before the Judge for a probation violation (PV) is in real trouble. Often, though, the situation can be managed. There are, of course, many different ways one’s probation can be violated, and some are worse than others. Nevertheless, anyone who violates even a single term of probation has put themselves at a very real risk of being sent to jail. At this point, the only thing that matters is NOT getting locked up. To do that, the lawyer must convince the Judge to give his or her client yet another break.
In practice, very few probation violations are entirely without merit, meaning that the probation officer got it all wrong To be sure, we’ve handled plenty where we have been able to show that our client actually DID what he or she was supposed to (like attend a class), or did NOT do something forbidden (like when there is an error, or mix-up involving breath or urine test results). However, the simple fact is that these situations are far less common than those wherein the person on probation simply screwed up in some way.