New GPS Tracking Gadget Is Also Parolees' Last Call

TBO
Posted : Apr 21, 2007

The judge gave Steven Williams a choice: Go to jail awaiting trial for reckless driving, or stay out on bail and wear a new kind of ankle bracelet that can detect any signs of drinking alcohol.

Williams chose the bracelet.

"I did not like wearing it. It's definitely not comfortable," said Williams, 35.

But the bracelet has proved the incentive to stay sober. "Prison or jail is not for me," the Tampa resident said.

As judicial systems nationwide deal with crowded jails and prisons, growing interest in new devices such as the one Williams wears could create a business boom for companies that make this new generation of ankle bracelets.

Several law enforcement agencies in Florida and elsewhere have started outfitting parolees with bracelets that can detect telltale signs of drinking and alert police immediately.

"This is very new, but from my perspective it is a fantastic device," said Hillsborough County Circuit Judge Lawrence Lefler, who has ordered that the devices be used in a few cases.

"If you have someone who you don't trust, or if you're curious what they're doing, you can put them on this and monitor exactly what they are doing."

The bracelets are primarily designed for people convicted of driving while intoxicated or others who pledge to abstain as part of their release agreement. But companies that make the gadgets are marketing them for use in other cases, such as domestic abuse.

"This is a way to more safely release nonviolent offenders and open up space in prisons for more dangerous people," said Kevin Thigpen, vice president of business development for ActSoft, a Tampa-based company that sells a version of the new bracelets.

ActSoft has struck deals with two government and private agencies in Ohio, and it expects to sign more deals this year.

The new approach comes from the convergence of two accelerating trends: advancements in cellular GPS technology and the struggle of judicial systems to deal with crowded jails.

Increasingly, parolees in the United States wear some form of ankle bracelet that can track their location via GPS microchips. That helps authorities ensure that people stay within house arrest and that sexual predators keep away from schools, malls and other places children gather.

The new bracelets take such tracking systems to a new level: alcohol detection.
Billion-Dollar Market

The bracelets don't take a blood alcohol content measurement like a breath test. Rather, they continually measure vapors off a person's skin for traces of ethanol, which the body produces when digesting alcohol.

Each person's body chemistry is different, so the bracelet takes a baseline measurement when it is initially attached, Thigpen said. Then parole officers can then set a triggering range to detect whatever level of alcohol consumption they choose.

In theory, the devices won't set off a false alarm even if someone accidentally spilled a drink on the bracelet, because it only detects ethanol processed by the body, not alcohol.

From there, companies take different approaches.

ActSoft's bracelet continually sends wireless signals to a cell phone that a parolee must carry at all times. The phone can't make calls, but it does contain a GPS chip, which sends signals to a central monitoring system that tracks an offender's location and alcohol use.

Like cell phone service companies, ankle bracelet makers expect to make most of their money from monthly service fees

The largest company in the market, Denver-based Alcohol Monitoring Solutions, estimates the market could ultimately be worth $1.3 billion a year in monitoring fees.

That is because about 18 percent of the current U.S. jail and prison population was convicted of an alcohol-related offense, or about 708,000 people. And 4 in 10 U.S. offenders now in jail, or 5.3 million people, were drinking at the time of their crimes.

Alcohol Monitoring Solutions has monitored 34,000 people nationwide since launching the program in April 2003, including 1,277 in Florida.

The new bracelets even helped two people arrested in the area stay off alcohol, said Frank Kopczynski, owner of Action Plus Bail Bonds in Clearwater, who is working with local judges to deploy the bracelets.

In one case this year, he said, a woman in her 20s facing a DUI trial agreed to wear a bracelet to see whether she could stay sober, Kopczynski said.

"She and her father went to great lengths to keep her sober and prevent any false positives, too," he said. "They went through all her cosmetics, shampoos and lotions just to make sure they didn't have any alcohol. So far, she's fine."
Cheaper Than A Jail Stay

Judge Lefler said he is encouraged by such stories, but he wants the devices to come down in cost. There are no set rules about who pays for the bracelets. In two recent cases, Lefler ordered parolees to pay for the bracelets - about $50 for installation and $12 per day, or about $400 a month.

That compares with $43.26 per day, or about $1,298 a month, to incarcerate a man in Florida and $65.46 a day, or $1,964 a month, for a woman, state law enforcement spokesman Benjamin Fairbrother said. Each of those costs has increased more than 5 percent from the year before.

Rising costs have put pressure on states to parole more nonviolent inmates and have spurred advancements in technology to track them after release.

Ohio House Monitoring Systems Inc. started using ActSoft bracelets two years ago and plans to start using the new alcohol detecting models as soon as they become available this month.

The company tracks parolees on behalf of Ohio jails and prisons, monitoring people convicted of crimes such as DUI, writing bad checks and sexual offenses.

"We work with many probation departments whose only way to check on what people are doing is to physically stop at people's houses and look," said Christina Miller, vice president of the company.

"Otherwise, they rely on the honor system. ... If someone's not supposed to be drinking, at least now they'll know. No matter if it's one glass, two, or people are three sheets to the wind."