§ 8.01-226.8.Civil immunity for public and nonprofit corporation officials and private volunteers participating in certain programs for probationers.

Courts often order probationers or people on community service to perform public-benefit labor — picking up litter along roadways or waterways, working recycling duties at waste facilities, mowing rights-of-way, or similar landscaping and maintenance tasks — sometimes through court-approved jail-diversion programs. This section protects the people who supervise that work from being sued by the probationer over the supervision itself.

The first paragraph covers public-sector supervisors — probation officers, court personnel, and state, county, city, and town personnel, along with other public officials and private volunteers acting as approved worksite supervisors — immunizing them from civil damages to the probationer or the probationer’s property for acts or omissions from that participation, unless the act or omission is willful misconduct. The second paragraph extends a parallel protection to nonprofit corporation employees and officials who supervise the same kind of court-ordered work, though their standard is slightly different: gross negligence or willful misconduct, rather than willful misconduct alone, removes their immunity.

That driver carve-out is spelled out only in the first paragraph, covering the public officials and volunteers: it does not extend to a driver transporting probationers or people on community service, or to any motorist whose negligence injures a probationer or person on community service — those actors remain fully exposed to ordinary negligence liability. The second paragraph, covering nonprofit corporation employees and officials, does not repeat that carve-out sentence, though its immunity likewise reaches only the supervisory role it describes.