Electronic tagging of criminals and a serious offenders’ register will be in place in Malta by the end of the year when a law regulating these matters should be finalised, according to the Times of Malta.

Justice and Home Affairs Minister Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici said… the ministry had worked on the groundwork for the introduction of electronic tagging. It would apply to those out on bail awaiting judgement as well as to keep track of prison inmates’ whereabouts. It would also benefit foreign people charged in Malta who might not otherwise be granted bail for fear they might abscond.  The tagging, which may be in the form of a bracelet, could also apply to inmates granted parole, one of the main proposals in the White Paper on Restorative Justice that was presented earlier this year.

The serious offenders’ list would include a paedophile register and would aim to protect people from perpetrators and keep track of those who were convicted of serious crimes, a ministry spokesman elaborated.  The type of “serious crime” to make the register would be determined by the severity of the punishment. However, the details were still being worked out.

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Until the current drop in the local inmate population, overcrowding had routinely burdened the Erie County PA Prison since it opened in 1995.   Reported by the Erie Times-News.

It had so many inmates in 1998 that it sent some to empty cells in other Pennsylvania counties. In early 2003, the prison added second bunks to hundreds of cells. “We’re reaching our capacity,” then-Warden Charles Barber said in April 2003. He spoke just after the prison’s total average daily population surpassed 700 inmates for the first time. The number peaked Oct. 30, 2006, at 743. The figures have gone the other way since then. The prison’s average daily population in December 2008 was 531, the lowest since 2001. The daily census was 516 on Dec. 24, 2008, also the lowest daily figure since 2001, and the average daily population was 606 for all of 2008, another recent low …

Erie County Judge Ernest J. DiSantis Jr., who works closely with the prison as head of the local court’s Trial Division, said public safety remains a major factor at sentencing. But he said his fellow judges know that home electronic monitoring and other programs for nonviolent inmates are effective. “Everyone is conscious of the issue of prison overcrowding,” DiSantis said. “We try to use incarceration judiciously” …

DiSantis is confident the shift is due to one change in policy, regarding the incarceration of parents who fail to pay child support. He said a change in policy for jailing offenders on probation and parole has likely contributed to the shift as well. A February 2005 state Superior Court decision … said judges must consider a delinquent parent’s ability to pay. The Erie County Prison held 124 inmates on average a day for failure to pay child support in 2005. The number dropped to 52 in 2008 …

In the other policy shift, for offenders on parole or probation, Erie County’s judges in 2007 altered a 2002 program. The old program, a zero-tolerance initiative called Sanction Certainty, required probation officers, with few exceptions, to jail offenders who committed probation or parole violations, such as drinking alcohol. The new program takes a more gradual approach. An offender is likely to receive a verbal or written warning before prison. “We’re not necessarily looking to lock them up the first time around,” DiSantis said.

vericatrajkova Community Corrections, Electronic Monitoring, Overcrowding, PA Erie County, Pennsylvania

Offenders sentenced to wear ankle bracelets would have to pay for their own monitoring, up to about $3,300 a year, under a bill Florida lawmakers advanced Tuesday.  Story from the Miami Herald.

The provision could save the state up to $5 million a year and is supported by the Department of Corrections. At least eight other states, including neighboring Georgia, require offenders to pay for some or all monitoring costs, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.  “The idea is that all of our punishment is geared toward making sure the person pays back his debt to society, and I think that’s what this seeks to do,” said Department of Corrections head Walter McNeil.

The state currently monitors about 2,300 people statewide, approximately three-quarters of them sex offenders. Last year, monitoring them cost the Department of Corrections approximately $5.5 million. Right now, only people under house arrest have to pay for the devices, and the department was only able to get ten percent of its money back, about $500,000. The bill lawmakers considered Tuesday broadens the payment requirement to all people wearing the devices…

[Secretary Walt] McNeil acknowledged that the money the state would be able to recover would be only a fraction of the department’s $2.2 billion budget, but he said it was important Florida citizens not pay for the monitoring. The department already requires probationers to pay for required drug tests and sometimes polygraphs … GPS monitoring costs $8.94 per day or $3,263.10 over the course of a year.   About 100 low-risk offenders wear a simpler and less expensive bracelet. It lets probation officers know whether an offender is at home during curfew but does not track them during the day. That kind of monitoring costs $1.97 a day and would cost an offender a little more than $700 a year.

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Marion County FL is considering joining the growing list of jails who electronically monitor nonviolent offenders instead of keeping them in jail, according to the Miami Herald.

The Marion County Commission says a pilot program could release some inmates with ankle bracelets would reduce overcrowding at the jail and cut expenses. Inmates would pay the cost of their own supervision.  Commissioners are seeking more information from potential contractors. Some county judges approve the plan, saying “the answer is not always banishment.”

Sheriff Ed Dean says he’ll comply if judges approve the program, but he opposes the idea “if it’s only a way to save money.” He says an ankle bracelet wouldn’t change behaviors that landed many inmates in jail.

vericatrajkova Early Release, Electronic Monitoring, FL Marion County, Florida

Wayne County NC commissioners Tuesday are expected to be asked to find $121,255 in local dollars to continue a state-funded program that this past year saved the county some $1.2 million, but is now facing the state’s budget ax. Report from the Goldsboro News Argus.

The county has learned that the Criminal Justice Partnership Program is among state programs whose funding might be eliminated as Gov. Beverly Perdue looks for ways to fill a $2 billion budget shortfall.  The cut would jeopardize the county Day Reporting Center program that is designed to reduce the cost of operating the jail by placing defendants on programs such as electronic monitoring … The state’s $121,225 is used for contractual services, operating costs and a portion of the director and administrative assistant’s salary. Currently, the county provides $24,301, which covered the remaining part of salary and retiremen…

Center Director Theresa Barratt, in a written appeal to the board, said the program had saved the county just over $1.2 million based on incarceration costs and an additional $27,090 in jail fees.  People in the program are able to remain at work and those without jobs are required to perform volunteer work and they all take educational classes and work toward their GEDs.   Commissioners last month appropriated $16,535 to expand the electronic monitoring program.   At that time, Ms. Barratt told commissioners the units not only help relieve overcrowding at the jail, they will save the county a considerable amount of money — $4 per day per person versus about $45 to have a person sitting in jail.

vericatrajkova Community Corrections, County-State Issues, Economic Issues, Electronic Monitoring, NC Wayne County, North Carolina

New Orleans’ city leaders are working on changing the city’s home incarceration and electronic monitoring system. The city is looking to rework its contract with the private company who runs electronic monitoring, Total Alternative Sentencing Program, or TSAP.  Report from WWLTV.

The arrest of two high-profile violent crime suspects, who were wearing electronic monitoring ankle bracelets at the time they were taken into custody, raised big questions about how the Orleans Parish electronic monitoring and home incarceration system works. “The system has failed. People were not where they were supposed to be, or if they were, they were certainly doing things they shouldn’t have been doing,” said Orleans Parish District Attorney Leon Cannizzar …

Part of the problem is that right now, there’s no set procedure for how TSAP violators are dealt with.   Each judge sets their own protocol for each suspect or criminal.  “That’s what we’re trying to do is come up with a process and develop a standard operating process for everybody. Some of these things that have been put into these contracts have good intentions, but haven’t tied everybody into that process,” Col. Jerry Sneed said …

TSAP’s original fee for 24-hour monitoring was $7.75 per person, per day.  When TSAP added real-time, 24-hour GPS tracking to their bracelets for certain offenders, that upped the cost to $11.50 per person per day.  Last October, TSAP again increased the fee to $14.75 per person per day.   Compare that to the $22.39 per inmate per day the city pays to put someone in jail at Orleans Parish Prison.

“We’re going to send it out for another bid so we can get the scope of work the right way instead of keep adding on things, so we’re gonna get what we need,” Sneed said about his desire to issue a new RFP for electronic monitoring company bids on April 1.

vericatrajkova Community Corrections, Electronic Monitoring, LA Orleans Parish, Louisiana

For as little as $8 a day, some Ingham County MI Jail inmates now can sleep in their own beds.  This report from the Lansing State Journal.

A new program, which began Jan. 19, allows qualified nonviolent inmates to choose house arrest, their whereabouts monitored 24 hours a day by an electronic tether they wear, rather than be held at the jail.   And there is no direct cost to the county. The program is funded through fees paid by offenders who use it.   It is intended to help ease overcrowding at the Mason facility – a longtime problem that typically leads to hundreds of inmates being released each month before they complete their sentences.   “It enables us to free up more beds for the people who truly need to be in jail,” said Ingham County sheriff’s Chief Deputy Greg Harless.

Qualified inmates who have served 50 percent of their sentence can opt for electronic monitoring at home. Also eligible are qualified inmates waiting for their cases to go to court. A judge now can set a bond or give the person the option to pay for electronic monitoring.

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The expansion of Gloucester County VA Jail, a project deemed necessary 17 months ago, is not dead.  It is, however, on life support, as reported by the Daily Press.

County supervisors agreed this week to include the project, among three dozen others, on a wish list to receive funding from the $787 billion federal stimulus package.   Translation: The county will expand the jail only if someone else picks up the tab. Sensing the unlikelihood of that, Supervisor Louise Theberge said on Friday: “There’s no jail being built” …

Her comment is a stark contrast from May 2006, when supervisors agreed to spend $10.8 million to build an addition that would increase inmate capacity from 42 to 108. At the time, the jail was so crowded that inmates had to sleep in the recreation yard during the summer.

Sheriff Steve Gentry… quelled the issue by using a combination of alternative incarceration programs to keep the inmate population stable.  In 2008, his first year in office, the jail averaged 84 inmates. The 2007 average was 83 inmates. The figures belie a 2004 study in which consultants predicted the jail would average 136 inmates.  Gentry bucked the prediction, in part, by expanding the jail’s work-release and electronic-monitoring programs.

vericatrajkova Electronic Monitoring, Prison and Jail Construction, VA Gloucester County, Work Release

Virginia House and Senate budget negotiators reached a tentative midnight agreement Friday on amendments to the state’s cash-starved $77 billion budget.  Report from MSNBC includes details of interest to the DOC.

The compromise fully restores the state’s share of funding to sheriffs, local police departments and other officeholders the Virginia Constitution requires each city or county to have. It retains funding for half of the state’s two-dozen drug treatment courts and designates $2 million for Internet Crimes Against Children Task Forces. It also scraps Governor Kaine’s plan to release prisoners early and divert some offenders to electronic monitoring instead of jail time.

vericatrajkova Drug Treatment & Diversion, Early Release, Economic Issues, Electronic Monitoring, Virginia

Wayne County NC approved the expansion of electronic monitoring devices earlier this month.  The first new batch are already in use, according to the Goldsboro News-Argus.

The use of the devices, which has to be ordered by a judge, allows the county to monitor people in pre-trial and those who have been sentenced to save money and reduce the strain on a chronically overcrowded jail.  The program doesn’t mean the county will not have to build a new jail, but it could help lessen the scope and cost of building, County Manager Lee Smith has said. Smith has estimated that a new 500-bed facility would cost the county $53 million.

Commissioners on Feb. 17 appropriated $16,535 to expand the electronic monitoring program [from 15 to 40 units] …

Most pre-trial defendants are with the program for about seven months.   It costs the county $840 monthly to electronically monitor someone as opposed to $9,450 to keep a person in jail — a cost that does not include medical bills.  Since July 1, the program has saved county taxpayers $600,000, she said.  “The taxpayers have not had to pay to have them be in jail,” Ms. Barratt said in an interview.  She called the $16,535 “a drop in the bucket” compared to the savings realized by the county.  For every $1 the county puts into electronic monitoring, it gets $4 back, she said.

vericatrajkova Economic Issues, Electronic Monitoring, NC Wayne County