Charmed bracelets: Electronic monitors help reduce cost of justice

Prisons come in many forms.

Sometimes they're massive concrete buildings surrounded by miles of razor wire.

Sometimes they're electronic gadgets small enough to wear on an ankle.

And sometimes they're a ticket to freedom.

"Courtney," a 22-year-old restaurant hostess with a 2-year-old daughter, was arrested on a theft charge when she was 18. She said she didn't steal anything, but she was with a friend who took a car charger from Wal-Mart, so she was placed on probation for what she calls "theft of association."

Her problems might have ended there, were it not for her fondness for marijuana.

She spent a couple of weekends in jail after failing a drug test.

She smoked some more weed, failed another drug test and spent two weeks in jail.

After her third failed drug test, Courtney got a lawyer and an electronic ankle bracelet and spent 10 months on house arrest.

She lost her freedom, most of her friends and a boyfriend. But she also lost her drug habit, spent time with her daughter and gained a high-school diploma.

"In some parts, it is a waste of time, because you could be out doing whatever, but for the time I had, I still did some pretty cool stuff," including passing the GED test and growing closer to her daughter, Courtney said. "It beats being in jail."

She also gained a mentor in Leslie Jenkins, electronic monitoring supervisor for Private Correctional Services, who met with her once a week, encouraged her to make good decisions and talked her through the rough patches.

"Every time I have a problem, I call her," Courtney said of Jenkins.

Benefits

Jenkins and Associate Judge Gary Kamp have seen many offenders free themselves from the shackles of substance abuse with the help of small electronic devices strapped to their ankles.

Some of the gadgets, like the GPS monitor Courtney wore, track the wearer's movements.

Others, called SCRAM devices -- an acroynm for Secure Continuous Remote Alcohol Monitoring -- measure the alcohol content of the wearer's sweat.

Kamp said he often assigns SCRAM monitors to chronic DWI offenders who otherwise would be in jail.

That saves taxpayers the cost of housing them and reduces safety issues related to overcrowding, he said.

Meanwhile, the offenders -- who must meet with a probation officer weekly -- get the accountability and supervision they need to overcome their alcohol problems, Jenkins said.

"The vast majority successfully complete the program," she said, and recidivism is "extremely rare."

SCRAM monitoring is especially good for otherwise law-abiding offenders who struggle with alcohol and are their families' only breadwinners, Kamp said.

"If you can keep them alcohol-free, they're making money; they're holding a job; they're supporting the family," he said.

That reduces the family's need for public assistance, thereby saving taxpayers even more, Kamp said.

Intangibles

Some of the benefits are harder to measure, Kamp said.

"I've had a couple of [offenders'] wives that have sent me some pretty -- I don't know -- tear-jerking letters," he said.

In their letters, the women described how the program helped their husbands avoid alcohol while remaining productive and providing for their families, Kamp said.

"I don't know how you put a value on that," he said. "It's obviously significant to society if you're keeping some people working."

Possibilities

Electronic monitoring -- backed up with zero-tolerance policies that give offenders an incentive to comply with the terms of their probation or bond -- has proven successful in Cape Girardeau County, Kamp said.

"My own opinion is it's been very successful," he said. "I'd just like to expand it."

Kamp has his eye on a pretrial release program used in Greene County, Missouri, that reduces the amount of time nonviolent offenders spend in jail, waiting to see a judge.

Currently, if someone is arrested on a Monday night, Kamp may not find out until the following Monday morning, he said. In the meantime, taxpayers are picking up the tab to jail the person all week.

Under a program like Greene County's, defendants charged with nonviolent offenses could be evaluated within 48 to 72 hours of their arrest and, if appropriate, released on their own recognizance, saving money and perhaps keeping people from losing their jobs over minor mistakes, Kamp said.

"I obviously am not going to put someone that's charged with murder or rape or sodomy, a crime of violence ... back on the street," he said, but nonviolent offenders are another matter.

Kamp said pretrial release reduced Greene County's jail population by more than a third, eliminating the need to build a bigger jail.

"If it worked out there, it could work out here," he said.

Kamp had hoped to bring the program to Cape Girardeau County this year, but the recent primary campaign consumed most of his time, and it didn't make sense to start a new program with Circuit Judge William Syler and Associate Judge Michael Bullerdieck retiring at the end of the year, he said.

"Out of six judges, we're going to have two new ones come in Jan. 1," Kamp said.

He said he hopes to get the program going sometime next year, after he has a chance to meet with Syler and Bullerdieck's replacements.

"If you don't get all the parties agreeing on how to do it, it's probably not going to happen," Kamp said.

On board

Both candidates for Bullerdieck's seat are open to expanding programs that reduce jail populations.

"I see those things as a benefit, because even if you put a guy in jail for a week, they lose their job, they get behind on their child support, and all of a sudden, their life comes crashing down around them," said Craig Brewer, who is running as an independent for Perry County associate circuit judge. "... It becomes kind of a downward spiral at times."

Those kinds of catastrophic losses can crush offenders' hope, reducing their motivation to stay out of trouble, Brewer said.

"Don't get me wrong: I'm not afraid to punish someone who deserves punishment," he said, "but in victimless crimes ... I think there is an opportunity for improvement through these types of programs."

Brewer's opponent, Republican Jason Tilley, said he also is open to such programs, provided they are administered fairly and do not take away judges' discretion or undermine due process by subjecting defendants to excessively strict bond conditions that effectively punish people without a conviction.

"I'm all for -- if people don't need to be sitting in jail -- getting them out and putting them under whatever bond conditions are appropriate," he said.

Costs

Tilley expressed concerns about access to such programs for less affluent defendants.

"I'm concerned about having kind of a two-tiered pretrial system where defendants with money are able to get out and comply with bond conditions that incur costs, and indigent defendants don't have the ability to get out because they aren't able to pay for those pretrial services," he said.

Kamp said while most offenders pay for their own electronic monitoring equipment, some funds are available to help indigent offenders.

"You don't want this program to be a person that can afford it only," he said, and the equipment costs taxpayers less than incarceration.

For people with serious alcohol problems, a SCRAM device sometimes pays for itself, Jenkins said.

"I've had people tell me that it saves them money in the end, because if you go to the bar and you have a few drinks every day after work, you're spending more than you would be spending on the bracelet," she said.

epriddy@semissourian.com

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