HIGH-TECH HOUSE ARREST
Peck, Keenen
HIGH-TECH House Arrest BY KEENEN PECK Each day and night, the movements of hundreds of Americans are electronically monitored by local and Federal authorities. The snooping always penetrates the...
...According to the court in that case, his program was "designed so that on every occasion in which the defendant leaves the restricted area, in Ryan's case, 100 feet, and each time he returns to it, the exact times of his movements are recorded by the computer on a printout sheet...
...For many of them, the alternative was serving time in jail or prison...
...ment of prior approval to travel out of the state...
...Today, such probing is commonplace, at least in the private sector...
...Electronic monitoring provides a more structured environment for the probationer...
...Private industry, too, has assembled electronic dossiers on millions of workers and credit-card users...
...Supreme Court went so far as to rule that probation agents may conduct warrantless searches of their clients' residences...
...In the short term, he favors county subsidies for persons who cannot afford to pay the $7- to $22-per-day fee that authorities demand of electronic probationers...
...In Pennsylvania, for example, an alleged embezzler was allowed to stay at home with a beeper but an accused drug dealer was denied similar treatment because, the judge said, home detention would not stop the latter defendant from selling drugs...
...But civil libertarians seem to be split on the issue...
...Del Carmen maintains that judges can be prevented from widening the net...
...But even if that problem can be avoided, another one may prove intractable: ensuring that rich and poor defendants have equal access to beeper probation...
...To the limited extent that electronic monitoring has, in fact, been used in the pre-trial setting, "it's been a la mode—for people who would otherwise have been released on recognizance, without supervision," adds Hall...
...First, the judge will conclude that a middle-class home is more rehabilitative than an environment of poverty and crime...
...The state received $150,000 from the National Institute of Justice for experimental beeper programs, and the Governor allocated another $100,000...
...The idea is spreading so fast that no one really knows just how many offenders are being watched this way...
...A handful of police officials have expressed the reservation that potentially Keenen Peck, a member of The Progressive's Editorial Advisory Board, formerly chaired the Capital Area Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin...
...Professor del Carmen is more optimistic about keeping the surveillance technology from spreading into other areas of life...
...Some beepers come with a portable transmitter, which the offender must plug in at work...
...A Federal judge in New York made a similar observation with regard to alternative sentences in general...
...In 1987, the legislature enacted a statute permitting electronic home detention "in lieu of a sentence of imprisonment to the county jail...
...But the prospects for greater incursions into privacy are ominous...
...A few right-wing commentators have argued that beepers coddle criminals...
...Where today's computers can record the location of an offender, or measure the number of keystrokes a typist makes, tomorrow's will be able to ascertain the subject's mood and health...
...That is, they are sometimes used to monitor persons who would not have been sent to jail in the first place—persons who would have been placed on less intrusive forms of probation...
...Beepers look good only against the backdrop of violent, fetid prisons...
...Traditional probation, to be sure, entails a reduction in the offender's privacy at home...
...Four other county governments are exploring purchases of beeper systems...
...You identify certain offenses where defendants are currently sent to jail, such as burglary, or where the penal code provides mandatorily that the defendant would have gone to prison...
...no one has been forced to wear the high-tech shackle...
...They nominally advance the enlightened idea of community-based corrections, but the lesser of two evils is still evil if the first is eliminated...
...Five prisoners were chosen in the first phase of the experiment...
...In many respects it is as intolerable within the United States as was the institution of slavery, equally brutalizing to all involved, equally toxic to the social system, equally subversive of the brotherhood of man, even more costly by some standards, and probably less rational...
...Earlier this year, Federal officials jumped on the bandwagon and initiated a program to track some parolees by computer...
...More frightening is the possibility that beepers will one day be employed to keep tabs on us all...
...The beeper blurs the line between freedom and imprisonment, and further erodes the sphere of self...
...That is something we don't have control over," concedes del Carmen...
...In either event, the beeper alerts authorities if the wearer moves beyond a proscribed distance or approaches a forbidden location...
...The different beeper technologies are being used in disparate ways at many points in the criminal justice process...
...Second, a working defendant poses a better risk than a defendant who is unemployed...
...Nevertheless, the fact remains that beeper technology could be applied in settings outside of criminal justice if there were political pressure to do so...
...A real answer must also recognize that many types of behavior that clog our courts and prisons, particularly drug offenses, should be decriminalized...
...The greatest use of beeper technology has been in the probation context...
...It is a socioeconomic problem...
...As a result, the middle-class defendant gets alternative sentencing or part-time imprisonment, usually without incarceration, and the poor and minority defendant gets a heavy jail term with incarceration...
...the prisoner population increases by about 4 per cent for every 1 per cent increase in unemployment...
...The cameras are installed in the offenders' homes, though they are not always turned on...
...felons in the prisons, a disproportionate number of whom are poor or belong to minorities, generally will not be eligible...
...It provides for better supervision and accomplishes a curfew situation...
...And right around the corner are DNA files...
...In New York, for example, a man named Barry Ryan had his probation revoked for traveling more than 100 feet from his home...
...But unlike the targets of wiretapping and similar police surveillance, these subjects know they are being spied on...
...When entry into or departure from the restricted area is made at a time when the defendant is required to remain at home, the computer printout states 'Violation.' " Other beepers are less sophisticated...
...sometimes, it goes on at work as well...
...Three counties in the state now have beeper systems tracking a total of about fifty probationers and parolees...
...With the beeper, the State can monitor its citizens in the last bastion of privacy, the home...
...At a national ACLU convention last summer, I took an unscientific, informal poll among some of the activists I met...
...Correctional agencies see the technology as a way to ease overcrowding in jails and prisons...
...The beeper simultaneously threatens privacy and promises to improve the lives of some convicted individuals...
...The technology itself invites such expansion...
...Beepers can be justified only because Americans have not embraced solutions to crime that go beyond isolating criminals in metal cells...
...Two companies, Lifecodes in California and Diagnostics in England, assist law-enforcement agencies in identifying suspects from tiny samples of blood, semen, or hair...
...If an Orwellian world of intensive surveillance seems like the stuff of fantasy, consider the origins of the beeper itself: About five years ago, Jack Love, a judge in New Mexico, saw a Spiderman comic in which evildoers placed an electronic monitor on Spiderman to track his whereabouts...
...But unlike old-fashioned probation, electronic monitoring empowers the government to control a population from within the halls of authority...
...This is "electronic home detention," the latest rage in criminal corrections...
...others use them to monitor persons sentenced to intensively supervised probation...
...If the judge would have sentenced the defendant to regular probation, then the beeper constitutes unfair punishment, for it restricts the offender's freedom more than typical conditions of probation (such as regular visits with a probation agent and the requireThe middle-class defendant gets alternative sentencing without incarceration, and the poor, minority defendant gets a heavy jail term...
...Deep-rooted social problems cannot be cured by a better mousetrap...
...Nor is it the answer to crime...
...The ACLU, among others, has expressed concern that beepers tempt judges to incarcerate offenders—albeit in their homes—who should be released into the community on traditional probation...
...The FBI alone maintains an index of almost ten million former offenders...
...Alternative sentencing and part-time imprisonment have strong class overtones...
...Last year, the U.S...
...Across the country, more and more individuals convicted of crimes are serving out their sentences at home, hooked up to government computers with ankle or wrist bracelet transmitters—"beepers" in the argot of the interested...
...The snooping always penetrates the home...
...In Dane County, one of those considering the idea, jail administrators calculate that a beeper system would initially cost $20,000 but would then cost approximately $5 a day to monitor each detainee—much less than the $40 a day it costs to house and feed each prisoner in the county jail...
...Technologically, 1984 came and went years ago...
...It's not widening the net," counters Rolando del Carmen, professor of law and criminal justice at the Texas Criminal Justice Center at Sam Houston State University...
...There's not that justification in a civil context...
...At the same time, though, beepers appear beneficent only because our existing correctional system is so horrible...
...Del Carmen was the co-author of a study on electronic monitoring for the National Institute of Justice...
...For example, video cameras, which del Carmen opposes, are already being used to monitor convicted drunk drivers in Annapolis, Maryland...
...And, predictably, a new industry of beeper manufacturers is working to spread the concept...
...On the other hand, if the judge would have sentenced the defendant to jail, then the beeper affords more freedom because it allows the offender to continue part of his daily routine...
...About 100 jurisdictions use electronic monitoring, from Florida to New York, Wisconsin to California...
...A real answer to crime must begin by addressing the correlation between poverty and law breaking...
...In every program, participation is voluntary...
...Beepers come in several shapes and sizes...
...In the words of the late James E. Doyle, a Federal judge in Wisconsin, "The institution of prison probably must end...
...Though beepers might keep out a few prisoners, a beeper system would fall far short of solving the crunch: Sheriff Jerome Lacke estimates that the jail will need 300 to 400 more beds by 1995...
...In Wisconsin prisons, there are 6,000 inmates but single cells for only 4,800...
...Turning homes into jails is not the answer to jail overcrowding...
...We become inured to losing bits and pieces of ourselves to this or that greater good or technological imperative...
...For people who are offenders, putting them on monitors is doing them a favor," he says...
...If the government can monitor pretrial detainees—who are presumed innocent under our system of law—some might say that it should also keep tabs on former mental patients, political agitators, or street people...
...Some varieties send an intermittent electronic signal to a transmitter placed on the offender's home telephone, and that transmitter in turn relays data to police...
...Finally, the crimes for which electronic home detention is an option are usually minor offenses...
...Love persuaded a friend to develop the idea as well as the gadgetry, and the rest is history...
...To be sure, a drunk driver is a criminal, unlike an AIDS patient...
...A typical beeper resembles an oversize Dick Tracy wristwatch, but some are attached to the ankle...
...Probation administrators regard electronic home detention as an effective, inexpensive method of supervising probationers...
...Writing in the Howard Law Journal, Henry Bramwell stated: "The poor and the minority defendant is usually one who has committed a violent crime, is without means, and has little or no recognition in his community...
...Moreover, beepers are believed to be used in situations where even this sorry rationale cannot be mustered...
...The U.S...
...dangerous persons will be released into the community...
...One can hardly second-guess the prisoner who would rather surrender a modicum of privacy at home than lose all privacy, and possibly his life, in prison...
...That is a qualitative increase in police power...
...Though many said beepers herald an Orwellian state of affairs, others argued that beepers represent a humane alternative to institutional confinement...
...Even an electronic one...
...You want to hit that middle cohort instead of dipping down," he says...
...K.P...
...A few years ago, polygraph examinations and drug tests appeared to be isolated incursions into the privacy of a handful of unfortunate individuals...
...Opposition to the beepers has been sparse...
...It is not the answer to prison overcrowding, however, because the nation's penal institutions are overcrowded by thousands, not hundreds...
...This certainly is not justice...
...The index, known as the National Crime Information Center, is legendary for its rampant errors...
...Government has accumulated vast records about the citizenry in its 27,000 mainframe computers...
...It could be implanted like a pierced earring, or under a tooth, or beneath a fingernail," a Nielsen employee told Privacy Journal...
...Common sense suggests that judges are likely to sentence more middle-class offenders than poor offenders to home detention...
...The first evil in this instance is the prison system...
...The printout states 'Valid' when the probationer's entry into or exit from the restricted area is made during an authorized time...
...Such ambivalence is understandable...
...He disapproves of using beepers to monitor, say, AIDS patients...
...Of course, judges do not uniformly approve of beepers for those awaiting trial...
...The Wisconsin experience illustrates the growth of electronic monitoring...
...Some jurisdictions use them to watch pre-trial detainees...
...It is clear, however, that electronic monitoring will continue to grow by leaps and bounds...
...For those convicted of a crime and sentenced to electronic home detention, the punishment can be a boon or a bane depending on what would have happened in the absence of the beeper...
...It's not as practical to use it for pre-trial because that's a fast-moving crowd, or should be," says Andy Hall, an associate at the Pretrial Services Resource Center, a nonprofit information clearinghouse in Washington, D.C...
...The jail has long been overcrowded, holding about forty prisoners more than its capacity of 338...
...Instead of constantly tracking the offender, the beeper might do nothing more than emit an identifiable tone into the telephone when authorities call the wearer to see if he is where he is supposed to be...
...Instead, a jailer calls the offender once or twice a day and asks him to step in front of the camera, take a self-administered breath alcohol test, and display the results before the camera...
...Offenders—or, at least, those who would otherwise be behind bars—welcome the beeper, considering house arrest better than the big house...
...In addition, as more offenders are placed on beepers, the number of persons likely to get in trouble and end up behind bars—those likely to have their conditional freedom revoked— increases...
...Academic o'bservers have questioned whether beepers serve any rehabilitative purpose...
...and still others use them to track prisoners who were judged to be good risks and released before their prison sentences expired...
...Nielsen Marketing Research foresees a sensor that can transmit a person's blood pressure, pulse, body temperature, and possibly brain waves...
...In fact, the industry has already experienced its first scandal: A Florida judge was disciplined by judicial overseers for ordering offenders to wear beepers that he helped market...
...In late May, the state Division of Corrections began a pilot program to grant early release to certain low-risk offenders who agree to be hooked up to beepers...
...Objections like these are not immediately apparent because "electronic home detention" is actually a wide variety of programs and surveillance systems...
...In fact, they volunteered...
Vol. 52 • July 1988 • No. 7
