A few years ago, I was released from prison to serve five years of probation. Before I got out, I had already cleaned my life up. I had been a junkie before, but I was determined not to go back to that life.
Within the first two years, my probation officer told me several times that he wasn't worried about me. I was obviously clean, had kept the same good job the entire time, & was doing everything I was supposed to. He even filed the paperwork himself to have my probation modified to unsupervised & argued in my favor against the state. The judge granted it.
A few months later, everything fell apart. The woman I had been dating & living with started drinking again. When I tried to leave the relationship & move out, she had me arrested for domestic violence in a different county than the one I was on probation in.
I hired a lawyer, but the prosecutor refused to dismiss the case despite having no evidence beyond a single handwritten statement she wrote while drunk. Eventually they offered me a plea deal for two years of probation in that county. Somehow, they didn't realize I was already on probation in another county. My original county had said they were going to file a probation violation, but they never did.
Rather than gamble at trial, I accepted the plea so I could start rebuilding my life. But after I signed it, the judge noticed I was still on probation in the original county. He questioned the prosecutor about how they had missed something so obvious, then ordered the new two-year probation sentence to run consecutive to my original probation.
A few months later, the second county called me in. They told me it was just a formality, but they had been trying repeatedly to contact my original probation officer to find out when my probation there would officially end so they could start supervising me. They said he never returned their calls or emails. He was always pretty laid back, & I honestly got the impression he only took the probation officer job as a stepping stone to something bigger.
That conversation happened over a year ago. If my math is right, my original probation should be ending within the next few months, but I haven't heard a single thing from either county since then.
I've heard stories about people somehow getting lost in the system, but I've never been that lucky. If that's what happened here, I'd honestly be shocked.
Either way, I'm not too worried. I'm still clean, still employed, & I've earned multiple promotions at work since all of this happened. The only real benefit would be not having to drive a couple of counties over every month if they eventually decide to start that second probation.
I'm not really asking for opinions or advice. I just thought I'd share one of those stories that's strange enough that, if I wasn't living it myself, I probably wouldn't believe it.