Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2003 | 11:20 a.m.
Jail and electronic monitoring have long been the two options for federal defendants considered flight risks or dangers to the community, but new technology is providing another option.
Satellite tracking utilizing global position system technology allows U.S. Pretrial Services Officers in Nevada to track their charges 24 hours a day.
"This gives us another tool to use," said Jim Marsh, pretrial services chief for Nevada. "Maybe we have someone who needs to be supervised a little more than what we can do with electronic monitoring, but might not need to be in jail.
"The GPS allows us to have another level of supervision we can use."
Pretrial officers are responsible for interviewing defendants and making recommendations to judges about whether or not defendants should be supervised pending trial or freed on a personal recognizance bond. Supervision can range from checks by pretrial officers, to electronic monitoring, GPS monitoring or jail.
The new GPS system, which includes an ankle transmitter and a 5-inch by 5-inch tracking unit that clips to the defendant's belt, has already been used in two cases in Reno and is available in Las Vegas.
The two defendants in Reno face pedophilia-related charges, and one was jailed Monday after GPS tracking showed that he did not go to church on Sunday as he reported he was going to do.
"He was let out of the house to go to church, but he ended up driving all around Reno," said Jim Kingera, a pretrial supervisor. "We knew where his church was, and when we looked at the record of where he went it was clear he didn't go there."
The system utilizes an ankle bracelet to send a signal representing the defendant, and the tracking unit links to a satellite to track the defendant's movements. When the defendant returns home the tracking unit is placed in a charger that downloads the information to ProTech Monitoring Inc., where the data is streamed to pretrial services computers in Las Vegas.
Areas that are off-limits to defendants can be programmed into the system, and if the defendant enters one of these zones the system can record it, Marsh said.
"If there has been a violation where a defendant goes into a zone we have made off-limits we get an e-mail," Marsh said. "Then we can go into the computer and pull up the map and see exactly where the defendant went."
The data can be broken down to street-level and can pinpoint the defendant to within 150 feet. It records how long the defendant is at locations, and even the speed he or she is traveling.
"The advantage to us is that this tells us exactly where they've been," Marsh said. "With electronic monitoring we give them a window to go to work or something, but we don't know where they went during that window."
Accused pedophiles and bank robbers might be good candidates for GPS because of the ability to program in the exclusionary zones, said Terry Wheaton, an electronic monitoring specialist with pretrial services.
"If you have someone you don't want to go near schools, you can program a route that gets them to work but doesn't go near schools," Wheaton said.
If the defendant were to go off the route it would be considered a violation and the defendant would likely end up in jail. Trying to remove the monitoring equipment or tampering with it is also a violation, Marsh said.
"We're going into this with a zero-tolerance attitude," Marsh said. "If these people don't do what they're supposed to do they go back to jail.
"These are people accused of serious crimes, and we're not going to be foolish about this."
The system will be recommended to judges by pretrial services on a case-by-case basis.
"It definitely gives us more flexibility, and it's a tool I'm hopeful can increase the number of releases prior to trial," Federal Public Defender Franny Forsman said. "There's a lot of rehab that can occur before trial."
U.S. Marshal supervisor Fidencio Rivera said house arrest in general "saves money because of the cost of incarceration, and also in the costs of transporting prisoners for medical care. If the person is not incarcerated they can get their own medical care."
The computer software, tracking units and chargers cost about $1,600 per set, about twice the price of electronic monitoring equipment, and the cost per day is more expensive for the GPS system, but it still saves taxpayers money, Rivera said.
About 450 federal defendants are jailed in Nevada on any given day at an average cost of $70 per inmate per day. In contrast electronic monitoring costs about $3 a day per defendant, and GPS about $4 a day.
There is also an active GPS system that records defendant movements and instantaneously transmits the data. That costs $10 a day. Currently authorities in Nevada are using only the passive system that downloads information from a charger at the defendant's home, but can go to an active system if a case calls for it.
archive
