As someone who has worked with numerous people who spent 10 or more years trying to complete 2 years of probation only to be violated over and over for no productive reason this is a huge piece of long needed real reform. https://twitter.com/PhillyInquirer/status/1384133405688745986

These forever probation bids especially hurt people who use drugs; abstinence is a requirement for everyone on probation whether they are capable of maintaining it or not. I have seen people give up trying to moderate their use at all because they have no hope of getting 2 years.

It has warped the entire treatment drug system, stacking it full of people who would never chose to seek it, people whose clinical justification for it boils down to a judge wanting it. It turned drug treatment into adult day care, giving the system a way to track people.

It completely blocked harm reduction from making significant inroads, resulting in massive health and mortality costs. No justice program let's people use. Abstinence must be the goal. Any harm reduction effort must work around that central fact, defeating the point.

And *everyone* was on probation in Philly at one point. People who don't know it don't see it. I can't tell you how many times I road the sub and the bus and half the people on it are reading, using yellow cards for book marks. Yellow cards all over the ground in Kensington.

This is an artifact of the old Philly that made policy based on white fear and thirst for retribution, dressing it up as personal responsibility and accountability. Good riddance, may those days never return.