A self-described former gang member in a silver and black Bo Jackson Raiders jersey and Nike high tops strutted into an Oakland parole office Thursday morning to get a new GPS unit strapped around his ankle. Sergio, 43, said he wasn’t happy to represent one of the new frontiers of state corrections. The anklet he has worn 24 hours a day for the past two months, he said, made him feel like a dog on a leash. Story, with additional photos, in the San Francisco Chronicle.

“Like in the cartoons,” said Sergio, who declined to give his last name, “where the dog gets shocked if he crosses the line.”

For corrections officials, that’s the whole point. Sergio is one of 40 paroled gang members in Alameda County, and one of 800 statewide, that agents began tracking in January – marking a major expansion of a GPS program first used on paroled sex offenders.

The program aims to monitor 1,000 parolees by year’s end, officials said, at roughly $9,500 each annually.

Officials touted the program Thursday in the midst of Operation Gangbusters, a multiagency sweep. By the late afternoon, parole agents and police officers had arrested 48 people, seized two guns and two machetes, and picked up four parolees who had allegedly absconded from supervision.
Protest was off-limits

The officials made clear how strict the GPS monitoring can be. Sergio’s parole agent can see his every move. And the agent can punish him if, for example, he crosses into old stomping grounds in San Leandro, or congregates with other GPS-strapped parolees.

Mark Morris, 22, who also had his GPS unit updated Thursday, said the plastic device served as a constant visual reminder to stay out of trouble. “It helps me think more about what I’m doing,” he said. “I think it’s a good thing.”

In early July, said Robert Ambroselli, director of adult parole for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, gang members wearing the units were prohibited from entering Oakland’s downtown area during the protests that followed the verdict in the trial of former BART police Officer Johannes Mehserle.

A violation can mean a return to prison.

“Now they know my every move,” complained Sergio, who said he was no longer a gang member. “Now I just stay to myself and my female friends and whatnot.”

Corrections officials are under pressure to achieve success in their growing GPS venture, which some critics have called too pricey given the state’s budget crunch.

Agents’ use of the technology was criticized after the arrest of Phillip Craig Garrido, the man accused of kidnapping Jaycee Dugard in 1991 and imprisoning her in his backyard near Antioch.

Garrido, a paroled sex offender, was outfitted with a GPS anklet in April 2008 but was not closely watched. The case showed that the devices are often only as effective as the human beings who use them.

While Garrido was under “passive monitoring,” the parolee gang members are watched more closely. Their movements are not viewed in real time, but agents often look back at and scrutinize a full day of GPS “tracks.”
Tracking ‘worst of worst’

Ambroselli said the device serves as a “scarlet letter,” letting others know that a parolee is being monitored by police. At any time, an agent can flip open a laptop computer and watch as a screen of blinking dots and arrows shows them where their gang members are located.

“It isolates them from their network,” Ambroselli said. “It sends a message to gang members and their associates: ‘We’re watching you.’ ”

Officials are also intrigued by the potential for making arrests through “crime scene correlation,” comparing GPS tracks with crime reports to see if a gang member was at a scene – a shooting or robbery, for example – at a specific time.

According to state corrections officials, about 20,000 parolees in California are validated as gang members. But “only the most dangerous guys get anklets,” said John Bent, a supervisor parole agent in Alameda County. “They’re the worst of the worst.”
Electronic eye on parolees

For one of Bent’s agents, Brett Everidge, the technology is another tool to confirm whether a parolee is living within the law.

“It’s easy for them to say they’re doing the right thing, not hanging out with the wrong crowd, or hanging out in places where they shouldn’t,” Everidge said. “But this technology helps prove it.”

Sergio said he had served two years in Corcoran State Prison in Kings County for discharging a firearm in public. He said he was a gang member in his youth.

Sergio said friends who visited him often made fun of his GPS unit, prompting him to consider decorating an item that is becoming an increasingly common accessory.

“I asked my (parole officer) if I could put some bling on it,” Sergio said. “He said it was OK, as long as it still worked. Maybe I’ll put a Raiders sticker on it.”

jchev California, Electronic Monitoring, GPS, Parole

Several years ago, California decided to require high-risk parolees, such as gang members and sex offenders, to wear GPS monitoring devices. The idea was to relay location information to law enforcement to ensure that the convicts stay where they’re supposed to. Unfortunately, the state often misses those alerts, making the devices both a lesson in the pitfalls of technology management and a massive exercise in largely useless spending. News from CBS Business Network.

In 2004, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger first supported a pilot program to track 500 sex offenders and alert authorities if one of them wandered too far from home. California voters passed a ballot initiative, nicknamed Jessica’s Law, in 2006 that prohibited sex offenders from being within 2,000 feet of a school or park and required all offenders to wear monitoring devices for the rest of their lives. By this year, the state wanted to expand monitoring to a thousand paroled gang members at a cost of $9,500 a year for each one.

The move expands what is already the nation’s biggest Global Positioning System monitoring program of convicts, coming three years after voters required satellite tracking of more than 7,000 paroled sex offenders.

Unfortunately, the technology, as California implemented it, didn’t work. The case of convicted sex offender Leonard Scroggins shows the system’s problem. Scroggins cut the tracking device off his ankle and allegedly tried to rob or kidnap several women and girls over a two-day period. The device sounded an alarm and parole officers pushed through the paperwork for an arrest warrant, but the process took nearly 24 hours. Even then, police would only learn of the warrant if they picked up Scroggins for some other reason and then checked the appropriate database.

Computers can automatically route signals to the proper people in law enforcement. Nevertheless, parole officials have left tens of thousands of electronic alerts unresolved:

Officials say the backlog grew because they lacked software to run an ongoing report of all unresolved cases. That is, supervisors in Southern California were working only with reports of new alarms, rather than a report showing previous alarms that had not been cleared.

Officials clearly didn’t have a desktop database or spreadsheet to filter and analyze the alerts, and so they were buried in unexamined data.

According to Petra Fuhriman, owner of GPS Monitoring Solutions, a monitoring consulting and services company never involved in the state’s system, California chose a passive alert system. Notifications from the monitoring devices automatically go to parole officers. However, there is no differentiation among different types of alerts. A device could as easily signal that it had been removed or that the battery was running down. Someone might be on a highway, technically in a restricted area but actually passing by at high speed — or stuck in traffic, where it might look like they were loitering.

Fuhriman says that that parole officers’ phones and email in-boxes “are flooded with these messages, so they become desensitized and stop paying attention.” The state could write software to prioritize the messages, based on the type of alert and the frequency of notification to help the officers choose the most important alerts, but it apparently hasn’t.

Alerts also do little good when parole personnel are off-duty on a weekend and no one receives a message until the following Monday. Some companies provide real-time monitoring, with outsourced first level screening of alerts and officer notification for serious issues, but that is more expensive.

And so California, like so many institutions and organizations, looked to technology as a silver bullet siren, but failed to undertake the operational changes necessary to make it work. Officials cost-cut the original good idea to the point where it was all but useless.

jchev California, Electronic Monitoring, GPS, Parole

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has begun fitting paroled gang members with GPS monitors to better keep track of criminals considered to be among the worst of the worst. Reported in the Whittier Daily News.

By the end of the year, about 260 paroled gang members are expected to be placed on GPS monitoring in Los Angeles County, officials said.

“We’re trying to attempt to deter parolees from being involved in future gang activities,” said Barnard Villar, unit supervisor of the Pasadena parole office.

“It also serves to track the activities of those who fail to abide by their conditions or stay away from other gang members.”

The GPS tracking devices on the first group of gang members in the Pasadena area were activated May 11, Villar said.

Seventeen known gang members are now being monitored in the Pasadena area, with three more expected by next week, parole unit supervisor Barnard Villar of the Pasadena area office said.

To be placed on GPS monitoring, parolees must be officially recognized as gang members both in prison and on the streets, Villar said. Both new parolees and people paroled in the past may be fitted with the devices.

The devices may be used to make sure paroled gang members don’t congregate with each other, he said, or violate their parole by entering a restricted area, such as a gang injunction zone.

Additionally, Villar said, the stored information from the GPS devices can be used in an investigation if a monitored parolee is suspected of a crime or parole violation.

Parole officials contract with an outside company to monitor the GPS trackers and send out alerts when a violation is observed, Villar said. Parole agents also have real-time access to the information provided by the GPS bracelets, which track the exact location of the wearers via satellite 24 hours a day.

California parole officials have been placing high-risk gang member parolees on GPS monitoring for several years, officials said, but legislation signed into law by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in October expanded the program to place 1,000 gang member parolees on GPS monitoring statewide.

The legislation was the same bill that mandated more than 20,000 parolees considered to be low-risk be released with minimal parole supervision, or “non-revocable parole.”

While about 160 paroled gang members were being monitored by GPS prior to the new legislation, officials plan to increase that number to 1,000 by the end of the year, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation District Administrator Maria Franco said.

Local parole offices have been implementing the additional GPS devices as staff training allows since the law took effect Jan. 25, Franco added.

While Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich has expressed differences of opinion with state parole officials in the past, the gang member GPS monitoring program is a program the supervisor supports, said his spokesman, Tony Bell.

“While the supervisor has had issues with the state’s non-revocable parole, this program has merit,” he said.

GPS tracking devices are being used as an additional means of oversight for parolees, Franco said. They are not being used to shorten the sentences of any inmates.

Antonovich’s justice deputy, Anna Pembedjian, said the increased use of GPS to track high-risk gang members benefits public safety.

“Certainly we would rather them be on GPS than not,” she said. “It enhances community safety because it can hold these parolees more accountable to the terms of parole.”

Parole officials have been running a pilot program out of offices in Alameda and Huntington Park for the past two years with positive results, Franco said.

In addition to using the system to provide law enforcement officials with valuable information for their investigations, she said, “We were able to use it to prevent felonies from occurring.”

jchev CA Los Angeles County, GPS

State corrections officials are increasing the use of satellite tracking for gang members on parole. News from the Union Tribune.

The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation currently monitors about 160 high-risk gang members. With new legislation this year, the department plans to increase that to 1,000.

“California has taken a bold step in focusing its attention and resources on those gang members identified as posing the highest risk to the public,” said the department’s secretary, Matthew Cate. “We are committed to improving supervision of gang members which will help increase public safety.”

As part of a gang sweep in Fresno and Clovis, concluded Wednesday, 80 new gang members were outfitted with the global positioning system ankle bracelets. The department says lower supervision of non-serious, non-violent and non-sex offenders has allowed better supervision of those deemed higher risk.

jchev California, Electronic Monitoring, GPS

The Czech government on Monday approved Justice Minister Daniela Kovarova’s project of the introduction of house arrest and electronic monitoring system to prevent a possible collapse of the Czech prison service, lower its costs and protect society against repeat criminals.  Story from Prague Monitor.

The possibility of house arrest is embedded in the new Penal Code that will take effect as of January 2010. The Justice Ministry says house arrest should be an alternative to prison sentence for less serious crimes, for instance, minor thefts, and it is to replace the current alternative punishment in the form of community works.

The ministry’s new plan is divided into three phases. The first phase starts when the house arrest punishment takes effect and continues until the introduction of the electronic monitoring of convicts via a special tether with a sensor. At the same time a monitoring device sending information on the convicts’ movement to the central system should be installed in their homes. The project is to decrease the number of prisoners within the first phase already.

The ministry also plans to raise the number of employees in the Probation and Mediation Service by 90 people in connection with the project. The service is to select convicts suitable for house arrest and provide their random checks.

The second phase of the project follows up to the introduction of electronic monitoring of convicts and the completion of changes to respective laws. The Justice Ministry wants to apply for EU subsidies for this phase. In such a case the state would cover only 30 percent of the costs and save some 111 million crowns.

Within the third phase, planned in 2011-2013, house arrest and the electronic monitoring system would be interconnected in judiciary practice.

There are 35 prisons in the ten-million Czech Republic and all of them are overcrowded. A total of 22,000 inmates were in Czech prisons in July and another 7500 convicts were sent to prison but they did not start serving their sentences yet.

jakking Community Corrections, Electronic Monitoring, Europe, INTERNATIONAL, Overcrowding

Kittitas County WA officials are considering increasing what they charge local cities to put prisoners into county jail as the result of significantly rising incarceration costs.    County Sheriff Gene Dana said the Sheriff’s Office also is looking for ways to help the cities reduce the number of people they must put in jail with a possible expansion of the electronic home monitoring program.  Reported by the Daily Record.

Dana said the major increasing cost is the shipping of more and more prisoners to jails in other counties and cities as the local inmate population rises. In August 2009 alone, it cost the county around $80,000 to transport and keep prisoners in Chelan, Okanogan and Ferry counties and in the city of Sunnyside jail. “If you do the math we’re pushing up to about $1 million a year just to ship out prisoners,” Dana said. Dana on Friday said an updated projection puts year-end costs to send prisoners elsewhere in 2009 at around $800,000.

That money is coming from “banked” funds generated by a one-tenth of 1 percent local sales tax designated to be put away for improving the county’s criminal detention facilities. The tax was approved in the mid 1990s and is also used to send juvenile offenders to a facility in Yakima County. “We have been counting on those funds to help support improving and expanding our local jail,” Dana said. “That’s money we could be spending locally on a better jail.” At the rate the county is spending to ship inmates out, Dana believes the cost could reach a point where it is exceeding the revenue coming in from the sales tax.

Dana said the county bills the cities of Ellensburg, Kittitas, Cle Elum, Roslyn and South Cle Elum quarterly for jail services. The bill is based on the number of inmates the cities brought in the year before, plus about a 2 percent increase. The cost to house a prisoner in the county jail, Dana said, averages about $50 a day. He said the county’s daily inmate population runs from 120 to 130 if all prisoners are counted at the out-of-county facilities. The overcrowded and aging county jail has been modified to safely hold around 85 inmates, Dana said. “Our costs have risen and most of the entities are now bringing us more prisoners than were expected,” Dana said. “We’re seeing a real increase, especially from the state patrol.”

The challenge, Dana said, is that the Washington State Patrol and other state agencies by law don’t have to pay to put prisoners in the county jail, including Central Washington University police and the state Fish and Wildlife Department. State government officials contend the state supplies benefits that offset that cost, including free use of the state crime lab and toxicology lab, to name a few. Yet right now, the state patrol’s prisoners make up more than 50 percent of the inmate population. The long-term hope is that the state Legislature will act to change the law to give county jails more funding.

Dana said some of the immediate options are to increase the quarterly bills to each of the cities, or begin charging a higher fee based on the actual number of prisoners and for each day they stay in the jail. The sheriff said his office and the corrections staff want to work with county judges to consider how to expand the number of prisoners who go home for “incarceration” with electronic monitoring, thus reducing the inmate population. A challenge, Dana said, is that more than 50 percent of the inmates have residences located outside the county. “That makes it pretty hard to monitor them electronically,” Dana said. “We’re looking at ways to, somehow, keep tabs on them in other counties.” County commissioners, Sheriff’s Office officials and representatives of local cities are set to meet Nov. 4 to discuss the situation. “We want to work with the cities and brainstorm how we can reduce all our costs,” Dana said.

jakking County-City Issues, County-State Issues, Economic Issues, Electronic Monitoring, Overcrowding, WA Kittitas County

More sex offenders will be monitored in New South Wales communities following a move by the state government to double the capacity of its tracking program. Reported by 9News.

Another 20 GPS anklet devices have been purchased to monitor serious sex offenders after they are released from prison. NSW Corrective Services Minister John Robertson said the anklet devices will allow police to monitor every movement of serious sex offenders living in the community. “Electronic exclusion zones are set up around schools, parks or other locations where an offender could come into contact with children,” Mr Robertson said in a statement. “And an alarm sounded if an offender attempts to enter these areas. If an offender is detected in a place they shouldn’t be they are immediately put back before the courts.”

Since the devices were first introduced in 2007, nine offenders have been put back in jail for failing to comply with their strict bail conditions. Mr Robertson said sex offenders are also subject to random visits, breath tests, urine tests and curfews.”

jakking Australasia, Australia, Electronic Monitoring, INTERNATIONAL, New South Wales, Sex Offenders

This report from the Courier News.

Jennifer Gullang sometimes has to cover a lot of ground in the course of a day’s work. “Every day is completely different,” she said. “Some days I can drive 120 miles; some days I can only drive 50. It just depends on the area I’m in and how many people I have to see.” As an electronic monitoring officer with Kane County IL Probation Department, she supervises about 65 cases, making an average of 20 to 25 home visits each day to defendants out on bond awaiting trial. “Everything with this job is time management,” Gullang said. “You only have 7.5 hours to do everything that you need to get done, and it’s really about prioritizing what is the most important.”

She is one of 14 officers assigned to keep tabs on the more than 2,700 adults currently serving probation in the county, according to Kane County Director of Probation Mary Hyatt. She said those numbers already reflect more than what would be considered ideal. “We are actually under what we need now,” Hyatt said of the department’s staffing. “Our adult probation officers have an average of about 197 adult offenders per officer, and you really shouldn’t have more than 100 to 125.” A similar problem can be found in the county’s supervision of juvenile offenders, as a staff of 14 monitors more than 1,400, or an average of about 102 cases per officer. “That’s way high,” Hyatt said. “Best practice is about 40 to 45 juveniles (per officer).”

The problem is compounded, according to Hyatt, with a projected shortfall of about $2.5 million in funding from the Illinois Supreme Court. That could mean significant cuts to some of the department’s more specialized programs and services. Hyatt said the department’s overall budget saw a decrease of more than $545,000 in 2009 compared to 2008. The represents about a 6 percent reduction, with even deeper cuts expected for 2010.In anticipation of a funding decline, Hyatt said her department already had been directed by the county to reduce its budget, with no expectation of receiving increases for 2010. “Our officers have more (cases) than they should have right now,” she said. “If, with budget cuts, we end up having to cut back on staff, we’ll have to focus all of our resources on the most severe cases we have and the basic services.”

Cuts would be made to programs such as electronic home monitoring, which allows the county to monitor offenders through the use of electronic tracking equipment. Also in jeopardy of being cut is the department’s pretrial release program, which conducts background investigations on recently jailed offenders to determine which ones are least likely to commit a crime if allowed to be released until they appear in court. “We’re going to have to take a look at every program that we have,” Hyatt said. Other specialized programs possibly affected include the county’s sex offender unit, which currently monitors about 213 people; and the domestic violence unit, which supervises offenders and works with victims to ensure their safety and help provide access to services.

Hyatt said cuts to, or the elimination of, these types of programs would result in most cases being reviewed within the standard probation system, which Hyatt said would make it difficult to meet state standards involving the amount of time spent reviewing and monitoring an individual case. “We are required (by the state) to do specific assessments on people and that we see them at a certain level,” she said. “And when you’re talking about raising caseloads to a totally untenable level, those kinds of mandates can’t be met.”

The effects of reductions in probation services can be far-reaching, according David E. Olson, chairman of the Loyola University Criminal Justice Department, who said the long-term costs will most likely outweigh short-term budget savings.”Having probation in place reduces crime,” he said. “So having less probation would likely lead to more crime.” Olson said cuts to specialized programs in which offenders have access to treatment for drug abuse, sex abuse or domestic violence almost ensures the likelihood of repeat offenses, inevitably leading to an increase in the level of incarceration. “It’s an unfortunate situation because probation is a very inexpensive way to try to stave off what could be an individual who imposes an extremely enormous financial burden to society if they continue with criminal activity,” he said.

jakking Bail, Budgets, Community Corrections, Economic Issues, Electronic Monitoring, IL Kane County, Illinois, Pre-Trial

Overcrowded jails in Montana have altered the sentencing habits of judges, forced county officials to release nonviolent offenders to make room for inmates accused of more serious crimes and led detention officers to retrofit their jails to accommodate more inmates. And as the state’s urban centers continue to grow, the problem of overcrowding is only deepening. Complete details on the Flathead Beacon.

Authorities have gotten creative, putting extra bunks into formerly one-person cells and using other government rooms to house criminals. Technology – like electronic and GPS monitoring devices – eases the strain, as do alternatives to incarceration such as substance and mental health treatment. Deferred or suspended sentences help manage jail populations as well.

In Flathead County, officials believed they had a golden opportunity to alleviate their overcrowded jail when they applied for $32 million in stimulus money to expand the justice center. For good measure, they also appealed for $12.73 million to the state’s Congressional delegation, a request aimed specifically at the jail and not additional office or court space. The justice center’s overall design plans call for the expansion of the existing jail as well as more space for the courts and administrative offices.

But as of last week, it didn’t appear the requested money was coming their way. County officials have received word on other stimulus-funded projects, but haven’t been told anything about the justice center, which constitutes nearly 50 percent of their total $71.3 million request.

“No news is bad news,” County Administrator Mike Pence said.

Pete Wingert, a county undersheriff, had thought the justice center’s chances were good. Design plans were hammered out and as far as he could tell the proposed expansion was ready to break ground as soon as funding came through, which is the often-repeated criteria for projects seeking money through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

“They’re asking for shovel-ready projects and I don’t see how this isn’t shovel ready,” Wingert said. “I guess I’m not sure what we’re missing.”

It’s no secret that jails throughout the nation are facing difficulties associated with overcrowding. For years, officials have pegged overcrowding at the Flathead County Detention Center as a foremost concern.

The main culprit for jail congestion in Montana is population growth. But Captain Dennis McCave, the longtime commander of the Yellowstone County Detention Center, said economic woes haven’t helped the situation. Destitution tends to breed criminal activity.

Across the state, crowded jails are forcing county officials to be inventive. In Billings, one-person cells now have two bunk beds, McCave said. At Flathead County’s detention center, the library is used to house inmates. Books are now stored on carts. Missoula and Gallatin counties also deal with overcrowded jails.

McCave said his jail’s official capacity is 286, but through rearranging and tight fitting, the “operational capacity is between 350 and 375.” McCave added: “There’s always that concern that the next shoe’s going to drop and we’ll get 30 or 40 more than we can hold.” Flathead’s detention center originally held 65, but was retrofitted for up to 92, though it’s not uncommon to exceed that number. On a recent Monday, there were 94 inmates.

“The more people you stuff into a small place, the more tense it becomes,” said Chief Dave Hutton, chief detention officer for the county.

Crowded jails have also altered the court system. Judges, county attorneys and law enforcement officers often look for alternatives to incarceration. For judges, this means sentencing nonviolent misdemeanor offenders to treatment, electronic monitoring, deferred or suspended sentences, or fines without jail time, McCave said.

Flathead County Sheriff Mike Meehan said his department has worked closely in recent years with the county attorney’s office and both the district and municipal courts to “streamline” the legal process.

Meehan said the county is looking into a grant that would bring in new electronic monitoring technology. Counties such as Yellowstone and Missoula have also adopted far-ranging GPS devices in addition to the electronic bracelets.

But the offenders who do get sentenced to jail often present detention center officials and county attorneys with tough decisions. If there are five violent offenders that must be put in jail and the cells are already at capacity, what five inmates should be released?

Continued report on the Flathead Beacon.

jchev Electronic Monitoring, Montana, Overcrowding, Technology

A combination of factors has prompted the Bibb County Sheriff’s Office to consider new alternatives to incarceration — including ankle monitors — as the number of inmates housed at the jail nears capacity. Full story on The Telegraph.

Higher bail bond amounts, an influx of people arrested in a recent federal sweep and a growing number of inmates sentenced to state prison and waiting to be transferred all have contributed to the problem, Sheriff Jerry Modena said.

“All this hit at the same time,” said Chief Deputy Russell Nelson.

In recent weeks, 953 people were housed at the jail, 13 less than the jail’s capacity of 966.

If it hadn’t been for the transfer of 104 inmates to state prison in June, the jail would have been housing more than 1,000 inmates, Nelson said.

But Modena said he doesn’t expect to need to build more jail space anytime soon. The jail opened a new wing, raising the jail’s capacity from 697 beds to 966 beds, in 2007.

“We’re nowhere near having to talk about having additional space,” he said.

Still, to ensure that the jail doesn’t become overcrowded, Modena said he’s exploring a range of alternatives to incarceration, including ankle monitors and a domestic violence pretrial diversion program.

The ankle monitors would be a less costly way to manage inmates by allowing them to go home, saving the county as much as $45 a day per prisoner, Modena said.

The domestic violence program would be patterned after the drug court and mental health court programs already running in Bibb County by providing offenders with counseling and clinical services, as opposed to incarceration.

Modena said he’s also researching an automotive education program to help provide job skills for inmates. That could help them find work upon release.

The jail now houses 92 inmates who are waiting to be transferred to state prisons, detention centers and diversion centers when space is available.

Complete story on The Telegraph.

jchev Electronic Monitoring, GA Bibb County, Georgia, Overcrowding

Hernando County FL commissioners have asked the private company that runs the jail to forego the 4-percent annual adjustment to its contract, according to a report in Hernando Today.

With the county scrambling to build a balanced budget, it’s just not in the cards right now, said an adamant Commissioner Jim Adkins.   Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) charges $57.18 per day for each inmate. If the 4 percent adjustment is passed, that goes up to $59.46 per day.   According to the purchasing department, it takes about 30 days to move an inmate through the jail system. So the 4 percent hike would rise from $1,715 a month to $1,783.  The county negotiated a five-year contract with CCA in October 2005 and it calls for a 4 percent compensation per diem rate adjustment each year.

Adkins said it might be time to consider dropping CCA when its contract expires Oct. 1, 2010, and bid it out. Or, another option, turn operations over to the county … “Could we run it cheaper? I want to say yes,” Adkins said.  That would increase budget accountability, something Adkins said has been lacking from CCA.

Commissioner Dave Russell had kinder words for CCA, saying the company has “worked with us” in the past.  But he too said any kind of increase is not feasible right now and the county has sent a letter to CCA to that effect.  The county administrator’s office is already looking into the option of having the government take over jail operations, Commissioner Rose Rocco said.  But, she said, there are numerous regulations and laws that come with running a jail and the county must determine whether such a move would make sense.  As for CCA’s request for more money: “I would like to see them hold off on the 4 percent increase and work with the county,” Rocco said …

The 2009 budget for jail operations is $13.3 million. Of that, the county pays CCA $12.8 million. The rest is money set aside for inmate medical expenses and other costs.   By comparison, the county budgeted slightly more than $4.4 million in 2003.   CCA calculates its costs based on the number of inmates housed at the jail per day and the more Hernando residents, the higher CCA charges the county.  That’s why commissioners are looking to free up beds for federal or state prisoners. The county actually gains revenue from non-county inmates. Deputy County Administrator Larry Jennings said the county would have received about $400,000 this year from prisoners housed from outside Hernando.

County commissioners are also considering exploring alternative sentencing.   One option is the release of more low-risk prisoners into society with electronic ankle monitoring devices. Those could be convicted drunk drivers or those charged with misdemeanors.   The county has prepared a request for proposals and is working with the judges to determine who would administer the program, which would save the county an estimated $200,000 to $300,000. The goal is to have that program in place by Oct. 1, the beginning of the 2010 fiscal year.

jakking CCA, Economic Issues, Electronic Monitoring, FL Hernando County, Private Prisons

Robeson County NC officials hope a new monitoring program and hiring additional jailers will address issues at the county jail.  Reported by the Fayetteville Observer.

The county Board of Commissioners has approved hiring eight jailers and allocated more than $200,000 for a monitoring program in the proposed fiscal 2010 budget. Officials say the additional jailers will meet the state’s requirement on physically monitoring inmates. The new GPS monitoring program would reduce crowding at the jail and allow nonviolent offenders to be monitored at home instead of being incarcerated. There are about 420 inmates at the jail, which is a 409-bed facility. It opened in 1992 with 250 inmates. The jail population ranges from 400 to 440 inmates a day.

A state inspector told jail officials earlier this year to change the way they observe inmates. The inspector with the state Division of Health Service Regulation says jailers should be checking on inmates in person twice an hour. Jailers now observe each inmate at least twice an hour on an irregular basis by looking through the glass on the cell door. John Harkins, the chief inspector with the Jails and Detention Section, said jailers must follow the North Carolina Administrative Code and check on each inmate twice an hour in person …

The county plans to hire four jailers this fall and four more in January or February, Windley said. The proposed budget allocates $175,000 for the positions … Officials felt two to three jailers would be needed to make the rounds instead of one to meet the state requirements …

The GPS program calls for nonviolent offenders, such as those owing child support, to be monitored through a GPS system rather than being placed in the jail. The county is allotting about $274,000 for the program, which is modeled after one in Pitt County. It will require two employees. Two road deputies will help administer the program when needed … The program is slated to start in January.

jakking Accreditation, Community Corrections, Electronic Monitoring, GPS, NC Robeson County, Overcrowding

A political fight that erupted last week at Cincinnati City Council over buying more ankle bracelets to monitor low-level criminal offenders obscured a basic truth, according to the Hamilton County OH sheriff.  Even if the city and the county purchase electronic monitoring units by the hundreds, it’s only a temporary fix.  Report from the Cincinnati Enquirer.

“No amount of EMU’s can replace the 800-bed jail we had to close,” Sheriff Simon Leis Jr. said. The bracelets, he said, relieve just some of the problems … Budget woes forced the sheriff to close the 800-bed Queensgate jail last year, reducing the jail system’s capacity by a third …

The fight began after some Cincinnati council members wanted to use part of $1.2 million in stimulus money given to the city by the U.S. Department of Justice to lease 75 electronic monitoring units, a tool that allows a suspect or convict to be monitored while living at home. But Mayor Mark Mallory sent that proposal to committee, meaning it will likely die without a hearing. Those new units would have come on top of 75 electronic monitoring units the county plans to lease with its own $1.2 million in stimulus dollars. Those would be on top of the 440 units already in use.

In Leis’ view, 75 or even 150 units won’t have a major impact. “It is just a temporary stop-gap,” he said. “There’s just no way this criminal justice problem can be solved without jail beds.”

What pushed the issue out front last week was the arrest of Miciah Black, a 20-year-old who was repeatedly ordered jailed on minor offenses, but repeatedly released due to overcrowding. While out, he is accused of raping a teenager in Lytle Park in downtown Cincinnati.   Since Jan. 1, the sheriff said he has had to release 8,571 prisoners, either immediately after arrest (the person is told to go to court), by telling people to come back and serve their sentence later, or by releasing them before their sentence is up.

Most counties [in Ohio] use at least a few electronic monitoring units. Warren County court officials say more than 600 offenders were supervised on electronic monitoring in 2008. Clermont County uses 10-20 units on any given day but hopes to use more in the future, officials there said. Butler County uses about 25 of the devices at a time … Hamilton County uses about 300 each day …

Last Tuesday, three judges went to council’s law committee meeting and begged for council’s help, saying closing Queensgate emboldened criminals who know unless their crime is serious there’s a good chance they’ll be released right after arrest and possibly not ever serve a sentence.Hamilton County Municipal Judge Bernie Bouchard, one of the three judges who testified before council, said the monitors are not the long-term solution, but they are the “best solution right now.”

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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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