More than 100,000 parolees and sex offenders are wearing ankle bracelets in the US, but a new report found that police are ignoring tens of thousands of bracelet alarms, and in some cases allowing criminals to commit new offenses.
Electronic ankle bracelets are used to track an offender’s
location by sending radio frequency signals at timed intervals.
Depending on the crime, parolees may be under house arrest,
restricted from leaving a certain jurisdiction, or have a curfew.
Tampering with the ankle bracelets or leaving a restricted area
sends an alert to police, who are then required to check up on
the offender.
But an AP investigation found that numerous agencies fail to
respond to many of the alarms set off by the bracelets, and some
don’t have clear protocols on how to handle a high number of
alerts. In some cases, authorities took days to respond to cases
in which parolees tampered with the devices or broke their
curfews.
“I think the perception … is that these people are being
watched 24 hours a day by someone in a command center. That’s
just not happening,” Rob Bains, director of court services
for Florida’s Ninth Judicial Circuit Court, told AP.
Throughout the US, AP found that 21 specific agencies logged a
total of 256,408 alarms for 26,343 offenders in the month of
April. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice has an average of
944 alerts per day. The Delaware department, which employed just
31 field officers, had an average of 514 alarms per day. And in
Tennessee, a government audit found that 80 percent of alerts
generated at the Board of Probation and Parole went unchecked
over a 10-month period.
Criminal justice departments that are flooded with alerts are
forced to sort through the notifications and decide which ones
are appear serious enough to warrant a response.
But a nationwide lack of responses has occasionally allowed
offenders to commit new crimes. With no one checking up on them,
parolees and sex offenders are able to engage in further illegal
activities.
Authorities in Syracuse, N.Y. ignored 46 alerts from child-porn
suspect David Rentz. One alert was generated after he removed his
ankle bracelet. He then raped a 10-year-old girl and killed her
mother.
In another case, Colorado offender and white supremacist Evan
Ebel tampered with his bracelet and killed
two people, including Tom Clements, the executive director of
Colorado’s department of corrections. His ankle bracelet alarm
had gone unchecked for five days.
“Technology is not going to automatically issue warrants for
people. It just sends an alarm that says, ‘This thing’s been
cut.’ And for people to ignore it, what’s the point?” said
Colorado resident John Leon, whose son was killed by Ebel after
the parolee tampered with his device.
Kelly Barnett, a member of the union representing probation
officers in Michigan, told AP that it is impossible to track each
offender every day, and that ankle bracelets provide “a false
sense of security to the community.”
California Sen. Ted Lieu had long pushed for harsher punishments
for those removing a bracelet. He believes that ideally,
offenders who are at risk to the community should be sent to
prison rather than out on parole, but the state lacks the funds
to pay for that. He believes that when when offenders tamper with
their devices, their intentions are never good.
“Dangerous parolees do not cut off their GPS devices because
they want to go to church unmonitored,” he said.
Republished from: RT