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 a 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-a-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.
• twenty-four-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