Can one serve weekends in jail as part of a deal with the court?

We call it Offener Vollzug
If your crime is light enough, the court can agree to you going to work during the day, and you returning to prison during the night.
In 2021 this applied to 14 percent of all incarcerations in Germany.

@ragingloli Thanks.

In Virginia this is possible (unless they stopped allowing it at some point), though there are probably restrictions on what crimes this can be done for. I don’t know the details, and I’m pretty certain this is possible in other states as well.

Here it’s basically probation. You’re given restrictions and have to regularly check in with a probation officer. You can go to work and do things like go to the grocery store but you’re not allowed to do much else without permission. The next level of this is house arrest. Some states do allow “weekenders” which is what you describe,

Back when I lived in the DC area, it happened frequently. All the person had to do was show that they would lose their job if they couldn’t go to work. They’d be out for work all week & then check in by a certain time on Friday evening & stay until about the same time on Sunday evening. I don’t know IF it’s still in practice now. I never hear about that happening here in Georgia.

They used to do that here on low level offenses like pot possession so people wouldn’t lose their jobs or so parents could get their kids to school. I don’t know if they still do that though.

It is common for misdemeanor offenses like drunk driving.

The cook for the boarding house where I lived in college had to do ten weekends, in by 5 p.m. Friday, out at 5 p.m. Sunday. It was the alternative because he couldn’t pay a large fine.

Yes, most any arrangement imaginable has been tried in some jurisdiction. For municipal sentences, weekends are often when people are allowed to serve out their punishment. Others have allowed people to leave jail for the necessary hours to travel to their regular job, work their shift, and travel back to the jail.

Yes, usually for lower level crimes you can have your jail time broken up to allow you to work. You can even get into alternative sentencing if the judge is willing to be that brave or crazy.

It’s not very common because people usually end up regretting it after the first couple of weekends served and either request a change to serve consecutive days, or they just stop showing up on the weekends and let it go to warrant. I’ve known a few people who tried it and they all quit and let it go to warrant, since it’s typically only an option for low level crimes, the state doesn’t put much effort into finding them.

I was just thinking about how that would spread a small sentence of like say a year out to seemingly forever. I could not take that, be better to get it over with consecutively.

It enables offenders to keep their jobs and still serve their sentences. It may even keep the sentence confidential, so the person’s job has no idea that they are serving a jail sentence because they’re coming to work every day. If it’s offered and it works for the offender, it’s an option.