By Holly Herman
Reading Eagle, Pa.
READING, Pa. — A 16-year-old Mount Penn girl’s home became her jail last year.
“It was horrible,” said the teen, who was on house arrest for six months for curfew violations and other crimes.
“If I left my house for anything except school I was in trouble,” she said. “All you are allowed to do is stay home. It was really tough. I was locked up and I had to wear that bracelet on my ankle.”
The teen’s name is being withheld because she is a minor.
Brendan L. Harker, Berks County deputy chief adult probation officer, said the girl’s assessment of house arrest is accurate.
“The idea is if you can’t do something in prison, you can’t do it while you are on electronic monitoring,” Harker said. “The only big difference is that you can sleep in your own bed and eat your own food.”
Probation officials said they have been using electronic monitoring for 20 years to save taxpayers money while keeping the community safe. They plan to expand the program in the next several years because of improvements in monitoring technology.
“With the problem of prison overcrowding and the high costs of incarceration, we expect to put more offenders on electronic monitoring,” said Daniel E. Milloy, the assistant chief adult probation officer who oversees electronic monitoring.
“We see more use of electronic monitoring as a trend,” he said. “It holds offenders more accountable for their actions and behavior. We would rather have more people working and attending counseling than spending time in jail.”
Electronic monitoring allows offenders to serve their sentences, typically three to nine months, at home under supervision of a probation officer.
Offenders need their probation officer’s approval to leave their homes for school, work, medical appointments, counseling sessions and exercise programs.
At any given time, there are about 50 adults and 35 juveniles on electronic monitoring in the county.
The latest device, known as SCRAM, which stands for Secure Continuous Remote Alcohol Monitor, detects if the offender is drinking alcohol. Adult probation uses it for about 60 percent of its electronic monitoring cases.
The juvenile probation division has begun using the SCRAM bracelets since the office merged with the adult probation office in March to form the county probation and parole department.
The juvenile division also started using GPS bracelets in the last year to track offenders who have committed serious crimes but are not at risk of re-offending.
“We want to keep the juveniles in the community and keep them from committing other offenses,” said Laurie A. Hague, deputy chief juvenile probation officer.
Saving money
Harker said $1.12 million was saved in jail costs by placing 159 offenders on electronic monitoring in 2012. Officials said 108 offenders wore SCRAM bracelets and 51 wore GPS bracelets.
It costs $100 a day to keep a person in jail. In comparison, the GPS costs adult offenders $8 a day, and the SCRAM costs them $11 a day. The fees are used to rent the equipment.
Juveniles are not charged to wear the monitoring devices. The county pays $5.59 a day per unit.
The seven in the juvenile GPS program could cost as much as $400 a day per youth if they were in a secure-detention center.
Adult offenders are placed on electronic monitoring for drunken driving and other nonviolent offenses.
A review board determines if the offender is eligible and a judge makes the final decision.
“The monitoring devices save bed days and stop filling our prisons with nonviolent offenders,” Harker said.
A GPS ankle bracelet works like a cellphone. The signal from the transmitter on the bracelet is relayed to the monitoring center in Colorado. If the offender leaves the house without permission, the center notifies probation officers.
“They are water resistant,” Harker said. “They can’t take them off and can’t leave their houses without permission.”
Found effective
Judge John A. Boccabella, who presides over drunken-driving cases, said the SCRAM program is excellent.
He said the bulk of second-time drunken-driving offenders are sentenced to five days in prison followed by house arrest with SCRAM or a halfway-house program.
“I believe that most people who are on electronic monitoring do not violate it while they are on the bracelet,” Boccabella said. “In the seven years I’ve been presiding over the cases, we have only had a few violations.”
Boccabella said at least the drunken-driving offenders are off the streets while on the program.
“I always remind them that a third offense subjects them to one to five years in state prison,” he said. “If you have a case where there is a significant alcohol problem, house arrest is effective.”
Milloy said the SCRAM bracelet will detect cologne and other alcohol-based products. He said officials at the monitoring center in Colorado can determine if the substance is from something other than an alcoholic beverage and notify the probation office via email.
Milloy said the GPS system isn’t perfect.
“Overall, electronic monitoring is a success,” he said. “We are keeping people out of jail and keeping them employed.”
The GPS anklets are used mostly for drug abusers, retail-theft offenders and in other nonviolent cases.
“By keeping people in the community, we can work with them and try to fix them and make them productive members of the community,” Milloy said.
Meanwhile, the 16-year-old from Mount Penn is glad to be off electronic monitoring.
“It was not good,” she said. “I really did not like it. I don’t want to do it again.”