TIME WARP 1985 "Court Programs’ founder introduces the first electronic monitoring device"
JAIL MOVES INTO PROBATIONER’S HOME
Februrary 15, 1985
By JON NORDHEIMER, New York Times
Jay Match fidgets. He paces the floor, sits for a while at a kitchen table to flip the pages of a textbook for electrical contractors, walks back out into his living room.
In a corner near the telephone sits a black box about the size of an attache case. The box is Mr. Match’s jailer. In a classic way, the prisoner has come to hate his jailer.
It has been two weeks since Mr. Match was placed under three-month house confinement by a county judge. A three-ounce transmitter strapped to his leg above the ankle emits a radio signal every 35 seconds.
The electronic innards of the black box in the corner monitor the signals and report Mr. Match’s movements over the telephone to an computer miles away in the offices of Pride Inc., a company that charges chronic misdemeanor defendants like Mr. Match a substantial fee for the right to be supervised at home.
Sheriff Praises Technology
“There is all kind of potential help this technology can give us in corrections,’’ said Sheriff Richard Wille of Palm Beach County. “With 40 new units we feel we can put 40 people who are already incarcerated out of the county stockade and free the space for felons.’’
He has ordered 40 more electronic units to expand the in-house custody program beyond the six used in a trial period that began Dec. 1. Pride Inc., is a nonprofit private concern that in a few years has pioneered private supervising of traffic and misdemeanor probation cases. Like a medieval jailer, the monitor tells the I.B.M.-PC computer downtown in electronic pulses the equivalent of: “All is well. The prisoner is not in violation.’’
Law-enforcement officials elsewhere in the country are monitoring the Florida company to see how well it manages a program that allows chronic misdemeanor and traffic offenders to stay out of jail and how it does other probation work for Palm Beach County. This includes the administration and staffing of the county’s schools for traffic lawbreakers and drug abusers, who are sent there by the courts.
Company Is Also Counselor
Most of the probationers, of whom there were more than 9,000 last year, are required to report in person to Pride Inc.’s offices on a regular basis for conferences with the concern’s counselors. In the past, these duties were administered by local or state agencies. Electronically monitored in-house confinement as an alternative to jail has been briefly experimented with elsewhere; for instance, in the Florida Keys last year.
Basically, the project operates like a program in which the prisoner is released to work. But these offenders spend a sentence confined at home with time off during the day to go to a place of employment. It also allows single parents, like Mr. Match, a divorced 29-year old electrician who lived in Woodmere, L.I., before moving to Florida, to remain at home with his children rather than having to place them elsewhere. Pride Inc.’s operation holds the potential for substantial savings to local taxpayers, according to local public officials. Its range of other probationary services already saves the county about $2 million a year, said Fred R. Rasmussen, Pride Inc.’s executive director.
Eye on More Serious Crime
Beyond saving local tax dollars, using electronics to supervise misdemeanor cases is raising larger questions on how the methods developed in Florida might be applied to more serious criminal offenses. “As long as it doesn’t take on Big Brother aspects,’’ said Mr. Rasmussen,” the chances are quite high we’ll see this type of equipment move into other areas of the corrections system.’’ His company, he stressed, is not a police agency and has no interest in expanding its operations to include felonies.
It is Pride Inc., and not the courts, that has the last word on who joins the program. It screens offenders who are given a choice of jail or home confinement, and from those screens it selects candidates whose background suggests they would be the least likely to violate probation. “Down the line this program will probably start accepting substance abuse problem cases,’’ Mr. Rasmussen said.
Not as Easy as It Looked
Mr. Match traces his troubles to ignoring traffic court summonses that led to suspension of his driver’s license. He said in an interview that adjustment to nighttime and weekend confinement had not been as easy as he thought it would be. By the end of the first week, he said. he was studying ways to dismantle the monitoring equipment without being caught.
It is possible to remove the transmitter and its plastic strap, he was told by his Pride Inc. counselor, but it is not possible to replace it without detection, a violation of probation that would land him in jail. If the black box is unplugged the computer records the violation and prints out a report to Pride Inc. probation officers.
The monitor in Mr. Match’s house picks up signals from the ankle transmitter at a range of 75 feet inside a structure. If a person moves outside the range, the monitor automatically reports the infraction to the computer. “If man makes it, man can defeat it,’’ Tom Moody, inventor of the monitoring system, says of his creation. “But no one has figured out a way yet.’’
The puzzle sometimes keeps Mr. Match awake at late at night when his jailer automatically dials the computer, making soft internal clicks and whirs in the black box. “I hear that box kick in and I feel like tearing it from the wall,’’ he said with a faint smile, newly mindful that iron bars do not a prison make. He is paying Pride Inc. a total of $410 to monitor him for three months, a sum that would be forfeited if he violated probation.
“Damn,’’ he says under his breath. “All this for driving with a suspended license.’’