Rude 15.5, 6, 7

5.
This passage has been edited to give each clause a human agent.

Courts use probation as a method to sentence a guilty party in lieu of incarceration. During probation, a probation officer supervises the offender in the community for a predetermined period of time. If the offender complies with the terms and conditions of the probation set by the court, the courts discharge him or her and consider the offender's debt to society paid. If the offender doesn't comply, courts may impose another method of sentence which may include incarceration.

6. The edited passage more clearly conveys who is responsible for what aspect of the probation process. The only thing sacrificed in the edited version is a clear word:definition set up, which is very helpful in textbooks. (The original read "probation is...") while this one places the emphasis on how probation works. However, the original gave a vague definition anyway. The structure of the paragraph is greatly improved by the parallel construction ("If the offender complies/doesn't comply... the courts...") and the consequences for the offender are much more clear. For this reason, a lawyer defending the offender might like the clarity, because, with the edited version, they couldn't argue whose responsibility it is that the offender comply, where as in the original they probably could.

7. In editing this passage, the I started at the beginning and edited each sentence in first to last. First I determined what the sentence was trying to say; I summarized the main information to myself. I usually do this by asking "Who is doing what to whom or what?" In the first sentence, I saw that the main topic of the sentence was "probation" and the main action is "imposed on," so I asked myself "Who imposes probation on whom?" I could find the whom, "a person found guilty of a crime" and I converted that phrase into a single noun with an adjective "guilty party." So I needed to come up with a "Who," and so I posited "Courts" as the actors, although "Judges," "prosecutors," and many other words could have worked as well. So I have the meat of the sentence, "Courts impose probation on a guilty party." But then I realized that an important part of the sentence was describing probation as a method of sentencing a person. So I had to incorporate that into the sentence. I decided to keep "Courts" as the actor and change the verb to the much less specific "use" so I could include the information about probation being a method of sentencing. The final sentence I ended up with was, "Courts use probation as a method to sentence a guilty party."
Then as I moved onto the next sentence, I realized that it would have the same actor, and many of the same words which would sound repetitive. The original sentence was "It is a court-ordered sentence in lieu of incarceration." Following the same process as the last sentence, I came up with the sentence, "Courts order probation on guilty parties in lieu of incarceration." Since the main meat of this sentence is the same as the main meat of the sentence previous, I decided to tack the new information in this sentence "in lieu of incarceration," onto the first sentence. Thus, it became what you read above.
I followed a similar process of asking myself who the actors were, what the action was, and whom was receiving the action to find the meat of the sentence. After that I compared that to make sure it conveyed all the same ideas that the original sentence had, and if it didn't reworking it until all the important ideas were included. Then I compared the sentence with what comes before and after it to make sure no information is left out or repeated.