I have mentioned previously how unjustly people, mostly single mothers that are charged with welfare fraud, were treated in Harris County District Attorney’s Office when Carl Hobbs was the prosecutor in charge of that division. Mr. Hobbs was reassigned to the misdemeanor division earlier this year after many years heading the welfare fraud division. I anticipated that his successor would have a different view towards the people that are charged with the crime. Not surprisingly, things have changed for the better. For example, they have granted a handful of pretrial diversions which is something that was never granted previously. I was told not to expect that many requests for pretrial diversion were to be granted in the future because of the nature of the crime. The reasoning by the District Attorney’s Office is that welfare fraud is a continuous crime and not a one time mistake.
A permanent decision that should help a lot of people charged with welfare fraud is that the District Attorney’s Office will consider reducing a felony charge to a misdemeanor. While this was done previously now they will offer the person a deferred adjudication instead of a straight conviction. The difference is enormous! A straight conviction is a permanent record that may never be cleared from a person’s record. By contrast, a deferred adjudication for a misdemeanor allows a person to immediately qualify for a non disclosure that would “seal” the criminal record.
