Post DUI Conviction Punishments & Alternatives To Jail – Work Release & Furlough

 

If you’ve been convicted of a DUI / DWI, you may be facing the loss of your job due to jail time, a criminal record, or loss of your driver’s license. All may not be lost, because there are ways to ‘mitigate’ your conviction through Work Release and/or Furlough. These are two options you might be able to work out with the court that convicted you and your DUI lawyer to keep working.

 

For work release, you would have to work at a place the court chooses—usually something helpful to the community like trash-collecting or litter crew—but you get to hang up your orange jumpsuit and go home at night. Work furlough lets you keep your existing job, but after you leave work, you’re required to report to jail or a ‘monitored facility’ to spend the night.

 

The Particulars of Each Situation: Better Than Jail

 

Most of the time these options are only available to first-time DWI offenders, not repeat offenders.  If you’ve got another DUI or two under your belt, or any violent crime convictions, the court is a lot less likely to want to let you outside, even for garbage cleanup.  For example, the state of Florida doesn’t allow release or furlough if you have:

• Previously escaped from prison.
• 4 or more convictions resulting in jail time.
• Been convicted of sexual assault or battery.
• An outstanding warrant, probation, or parole violation in another jurisdiction.

If you obtain work release/furlough, it will likely last as long as your jail term would have lasted (which, for non-felony (misdemeanor) first-timers, is almost always less than one year).  Release programs are designed to be an alternative to jail and to allow offenders to get back into society instead of being locked up for a year.  But any violation of the release privilege—not going to work when you’re supposed to, drinking on the job, etc.—will mean you’ll be stuck in jail, with no more work release and could be facing an enhanced sentence – i.e. MORE time in jail than before.

 

Freedom Isn’t Free: The Hidden Costs of Work Release / Work Furlough

 

Jail is expensive.  More expensive than even your DUI fines can cover. Food, electricity, heating, basic cable, and guard salaries all add up, and the state can’t exactly charge you room and board.  Sometimes it can be in everyone’s best interest—both the offender’s and the state’s—if a compromise can be made. That compromise usually takes the form of release or furlough.  Either of these—or both—might be an available alternative to jail, depending on your state’s laws. This is particularly true in Arizona, where sentences for DUI offenders are long and costly.

 

That said, because you’ll be earning some money on the outside, many states won’t want to foot the bill for your living expenses.  For example, in Michigan, if you’re living in the minimum-security dormitory for furloughed convicts, you’ll be charged $92 per week.  That’s $378 per month, which, in a house shared with other convicts, isn’t cheap rent.

 

It’s best to check with your DUI attorney and/or your local court if alternative punishments to jail such as work release and furlough are available.

 

Release in the Technology Age

 

Across the country, some traditional work release/furlough programs are being replaced by “Virtual Work Release.”  This does not mean that offenders are released into the cyberspace of the Tron videogame to clean digital streets.  Instead, it refers to the use of GPS and camera technology to ensure that, if you’re out of jail on release on furlough, that you are where you are supposed to be at all times.  You’ll wear an ankle bracelet (also known as a SCRAM device) linked up to a satellite so authorities know where you are, and you might even have webcams installed in your house to make sure you’re following all the rules. 

 

This costs you money, because the state and the courts are certainly not going to foot the bill. You are responsible for the costs of the GPS ankle tether and the cameras, as well as your own living expenses, since you are in your own home and not in a tax-supplemented jail. Still, sleeping in your own bed, working a job, not dying of boredom in a cell—it’s probably worth the price.