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FORT WAYNE, Ind. -- Some Indiana judges are handing down sentences that include mandatory English classes for offenders who don't speak the language.
   
While the idea has quietly gained popularity, it's nothing new, The Journal Gazette reported.
It's been happening in Noble County for at least 10 years, said Stacey Beam, the county's chief of probation, and in the past five or six years, it's become routine.
Generally, anyone placed on probation who requires the use of an interpreter will be ordered to take English classes, said probation officer James Hunt, who deals with most of the department's 50 Spanish-speaking clients.
Generally, the defendants who take the classes have been proud of what they have learned, Hunt said.
"I think they see it as a positive," he said.
Noble County's Hispanic population grew from 625 in 1990 to nearly 3,300 in 2000, when 7.1 percent of the county's population was Hispanic, according to the 2000 census.
The idea of sentencing offenders to English classes hasn't caught on everywhere, however. Steuben County Prosecutor Tom Wilson said such sentencing was a rare occurrence there, and Allen County Prosecutor Karen Richards could not recall any cases in which a Hispanic offender was sentenced to take English classes.
Similar sentences have drawn fire from the Hispanic community in other states, including Florida and Tennessee. But Fran Quigley, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana, said ordering offenders to a class is different from demanding that they learn a language.
When used appropriately, the sentence is no different from ordering a defendant to work toward earning a GED, and within a judge's rights, he said.
Sometimes offenders also are ordered to attend classes that teach national and state laws, Noble County Prosecutor Steven Clouse said.
Kosciusko County will start offering a similar class in Spanish next month, said Marsha Streby of the Bowen Center in Warsaw. The content was designed by a local attorney and includes information about domestic violence and substance abuse.
"Very few of the people that have gone through the class have had probation violations," Streby said.