MURFREESORO, Tenn. (AP) -- A company that heaped probation fees on Rutherford County residents, even though many were too poor to pay, will pay $14 million to reimburse those charges.
Providence Community Corrections and officials in Rutherford County, south of Nashville, agreed to the settlement to compensate nearly 30,000 people who were placed under the company's supervision after being convicted of misdemeanors.
Under the pact, the company does not acknowledge any fault. But it has agreed to pay $14 million to the probationers who brought the suit in 2015 and another $350,000 to the county. Rutherford will pay most of that as its share of the settlement.
PCC, which closed its private probation business in 2016, is one of a number of companies in more than a dozen states that turned misdemeanor probation into a profit-making venture in recent years.