For three years, Jamariel Hobbs was confined to Georgia, unable to travel freely or move where he wanted to. At the beginning, a probation officer showed up at random times of night to test him for drugs.
The soft-spoken Hobbs, now 29, was among almost 176,000 Georgia residents on probation, the largest per capita population in the United States. Then he got lucky. Because of a new law, the court slashed what was supposed to be nine years of probation to three.
He was free.
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