It’s not just a Sesame Street song. Turns out, it’s the embodiment of Michigan’s rules for probation. The Prison Policy Initiative’s report on probation is eye-opening, revealing the pitfalls, traps, and financial burden of probation in the US and Michigan.
Probation as a Trap, Not a Second Chance
Probation is supposed to be a pathway out of incarceration. In practice, it often functions as a tripwire. The Prison Policy Initiative’s research highlights how probation requirements are frequently one-size-fits-all, disconnected from actual public safety needs, financially punitive, and designed without regard for employment, caregiving, disability, or poverty.
Rules That Create Poverty
Many probation conditions have nothing to do with the underlying offense and everything to do with compliance for compliance’s sake.
Monthly fees stack on top of court costs, fines, and restitution. Missing a payment — even by a day — is a reportable violation.
Required check-ins are often scheduled during standard work hours, forcing people to choose between their job and their probation compliance.
Maintaining transportation is often listed as a condition — an expense that can be impossible for people earning low wages in areas with no public transit.
Conditions can change without meaningful notice. Navigating multiple agencies with different requirements — courts, probation officers, treatment providers — creates a compliance maze.
Missing a meeting.
Being late to work.
Failing to pay a fee on time.
These aren’t signs of dangerousness. But they are common reasons people end up violated and pushed deeper into the system.
Probation doesn’t just reflect poverty; it directly produces it.
One Size Fits All, No Matter the Cost
Probation rules rarely account for low-wage or unstable employment, caregiving responsibilities, mental health needs, substance use disorders, or housing instability. Instead of tailoring conditions to support success, the system demands conformity, then punishes people when they can’t meet unrealistic expectations.
This is not, by any means, accountability. It’s bureaucratic failure dressed up as supervision.
Why This Matters
If probation worked the way the public thinks it does, it would reduce incarceration. Instead, it proudly expands it.
The Prison Policy Initiative’s report lays out the structural problems of probation clearly and with data — covering condition design, financial burdens, technical violation rates, and what evidence-based reform actually looks like.
Because right now, one of these things truly doesn’t belong — and it’s a system that claims to help while doing the opposite.
