Electronic Monitoring Now Includes Sweat Sniffers, Screeching Black Boxes

Across the country, courts are ordering violators to use a variety of tools that monitor their behavior.

A Michigan court, for example, has instructed 39 traffic scofflaws to have black boxes installed in their car that issue alarms when they brake too suddenly or turn too quickly. The number of total alarms are recorded for probation officers.

Prosecutors and courts in 40 states have instructed drunk drivers to wear ankle bracelets that hourly check offenders’ sweat for alcohol content; results are relayed to officials daily via the Internet. Approximately 4,000 people are now being tracked this way, says Kathleen Brown with manufacturer Alcohol Monitoring Systems.

“We’re doing it to people who have demonstrated pretty convincingly that they are a safety risk for the rest of us,” says South Dakota Attorney General Larry Long.

As a result, very few have complained that these tools invade people’s privacy, says Marc Mauer of The Sentencing Project, which promotes options to imprisonment. He adds that monitoring needs to be coupled with counseling or other efforts to ensure that deficient behavior does not resurface once the device is removed.

The most rapidly growing tool is location monitoring, especially for sex offenders; as of 2006, at least 20 states require the tracking of some or all offenders by satellite.
Abstracted by the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center (NLECTC) from USA Today (11/06/06) ; P. 8A; Heath, Brad.