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Location Monitoring

What is the Location Monitoring Program: 

A supervision condition or sentencing alternative that requires people to be confined to their homes, tracked in the community, or both. They're linked to a monitoring system through an ankle transmitter or a tracking device worn or carried 24 hours per day. With location monitoring, the court determines the extent to which people are restricted case by case, requiring some individuals to remain on 24-hour-per-day lockdown at home and allowing others to leave for preapproved and scheduled absences, such as for work, school, treatment, church, attorney appointments, court appearances, and other court-ordered obligations.

How the Court uses it

  • As a way to monitor the location of people on supervision and protect the public from any threat they pose.
  • As an alternative to detention in pretrial cases, to help enhance community safety.
  • As a punishment in post-sentence cases, viewed as more punitive than regular supervision but less restrictive than imprisonment.
  • As a sanction when people violate the conditions of their supervision.

The officer's duties

  • Screen people to determine whether they're eligible for location monitoring. Those who aren't recommended to participate include:
    – Serious or repeat offenders
    – People who previously failed on supervision
  • Check to make sure they're adhering to their approved schedule.
  • Check monitoring equipment to make sure that it's working and to look for signs of tampering.
  • Respond to any alerts that may indicate a problem, including:
    – Unauthorized absence from home
    – Failure to return home after an authorized absence
    – Leaving home early or returning home late
    – Entrance into or near an unauthorized area
  • Step in to control and correct the situation if people on location monitoring:
    – Don't adhere to their approved leave schedule
    – Go to an unapproved location
    – Tamper with equipment
    – Otherwise fail to comply with their release conditions

The officer's challenges

Supervising people on location monitoring is demanding, time-consuming, and sometimes dangerous, requiring

  • frequent phone calls to make sure people are adhering to their approved schedules.
  • frequent, unannounced face-to-face visits.
  • 24-hour, 7-day response to alerts.

What the benefits are

  • Allows people on supervision to continue to support their families and pay their taxes.
  • Costs much less than incarceration.
  • Provides necessary supervision structure.
  • Through technology, provides the capability to verify that an individual either is in an authorized location or is in or near an unauthorized location
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