GPS no substitue for jail time

GPS no substitute for jail time

By Maureen Boyle
GateHouse News Service
Posted Sep 01, 2008

Philip Silva of Middleboro was sent home to await trial in Wareham District Court on assault and battery charges, an electronic monitoring device on his ankle to make sure he stayed here.
He was still wearing it when police raided his Middleboro home last year to arrest him on drug charges.
Paul McKay of North Attleboro was still wearing the GPS monitoring unit he was ordered to wear by a Superior Court judge after his arrest on child molestation charges when he was accused of assaulting a second child in Norton days later.
They are two of the estimated 1,500 offenders statewide each day either out on bail or on probation monitored by either a radio frequency device alerting authorities if they leave home or a Global Positioning System device tracking where they go.
Most, authorities say, follow the rules and stay out of trouble.
A handful do not.
“A lot of judges will put people on GPS instead of putting people in prison,” said Laurie A. Myers, president of Community Voices, a group working to tighten sex offender laws. “Obviously it is a good tool but it can’t replace keeping these guys locked up.”
The key, several said, is to make sure the right people are wearing the devices and knowing the limitations of the program.
“What is monitored is compliance,” said Jean-Ellen Ouellette-Kenney, chief probation officer at Brockton District Court.
The radio frequency devices are used when a person is on home confinement as part of a bail condition, sentence or probation. It sends a signal when the person leaves the house, alerting someone who is monitoring the device through the state probation office.
“It is used to check to see if the person is where they are supposed to be and where they are supposed to be is at home,” Ouellette-Kenney said.
GPS devices — used in cases where the person doesn’t have to stay at home — can track where a suspect or probationer is but not what they’re doing.
Authorities can program areas where the person can’t be — such as a school or day care center in the case of a sex offender or a victim in another case.
“They can monitor someone’s route when they driving, but you don’t know who could be in the vehicle with the person,” Ouellette-Kenney said. “The person can be in their home, but you can set up a (drug) drive-through window in your driveway. You can batter the person with whom you live .... “I couldn’t tell you that someone on a bracelet isn’t sitting on their porch, stroking a puppy, saying ‘Little girl, come over here.’”
That is why only about two dozen people with cases in Brockton District Court are on electronic monitoring devices. There are 14 people on GPS devices and a dozen on the radio frequency monitoring devices used for home confinement.
“In Brockton, the judges have been very choosy,” Ouellette-Kenney said. “We don’t have anywhere near the number of people on bracelets that the other courts do.”
Electronic monitoring has advantages, when used with the right defendant or probationer.
It allows the offender to keep working — saving the cost of housing him or her in jail or prison — and can free space for other, more dangerous offenders, according to a study by the U.S. Department of Justice.
One study in a major city found even those who try to walk away from the monitoring devices are caught with 24 hours and other studies found authorities respond within 20 minutes, according to the Justice Department.
But the monitoring devices aren’t fool proof. In Argentina, a man put on an electronic monitoring device last year reportedly found a way to circumvent the device and is now accused of killing a family.
In Massachusetts, those on GPS system pay $10 a day to lease the equipment needed.
Ouellette-Kenney said those on the devices are also checked on by probation officers in surprise visits. Some of the monitoring equipment have Breathalyzer-type devices built in to check, randomly, for alcohol.
All of the devices can be a plus in monitoring people but it can’t be used alone.
“It is a tool. It can either be a sharp-edged tool or a dull tool,” Ouellette-Kenney said. “It is how it is maintained and how it is applied.”
Maureen Boyle can be reached at mboyle@enterprisenews.com.