Pretrial/Companies In 2017 the Maryland Court of Appeals ruled that people could not be held in jail because they can’t afford bail. However, part of the criminal legal system’s response was to put people on electronic monitoring with high fees. This had similar effects to imposing cash bail in the first place, a way of …
Learn MorePost-Prison Massachusetts has highest rate of EM for people on parole EM and the Law/Pretrial In Commonwealth v. Norman, the court held that pretrial imposition of GPS monitoring was unreasonable for a defendant released under the general bail statute. Post-prison Jorge Renaud completed 17 years of a 60-year sentence in Texas before being paroled in …
Learn MoreEM and the Law For years the state of Maine has had extensive debates and studies over the issue of electronic monitoring. While much of this has focused on the issue of the use of electronic monitoring in domestic violence cases, in recent years the focus has shifted to pretrial justice and the use of …
Learn MoreEM and the Law One of the most important legal decisions regarding EM took place in 2015: Grady v. North Carolina. The U.S. Supreme Court held that attaching a device without consent to a person’s body for the purpose of tracking that individual’s movements constitutes a search as defined under the Fourth Amendment of the …
Learn MorePretrial/Companies/New Technologies Shadowtrack is a cellphone app that has tracking capacities. In the wake of the pandemic many parole and probation deparments have implemented this technology both as a way of getting people out of jail and leaving behind the traditional ankle monitors. According to a report in The Guardian over 11,000 in Virginia were …
Learn MorePretrial/EM and the Law/Companies Although New York City historically has not used pretrial electronic monitoring, there is concern that changes in bail legislation in 2019 would open the door to the spread of EM in New York City and other parts of the state. However, the new legislation contained a clause mandating that any monitoring …
Learn MorePretrial/Resistance Every year on Mother’s Day, the National Bail Out pays to get Black Mamas out of jail. One of their biggest programs is in Atlanta, but the organization is active in more than a dozen sites across the country. The collective has maintained strong opposition to pretrial electronic monitoring. Pretrial/EM and the Law Legislation-Georgia …
Learn MorePost-release A 2018 state taskforce report concluded that “limited evidence” exists to support that expansion of electronic monitoring would reduce crime or recidivism. The report did suggest that EM could assist investigators in identifying who committed a crime after it took place, but noted that “the costs associated with developing and operating such an initiative …
Learn MorePre-Trial Marion County (where Indianapolis is located) has the highest levels of pretrial electronic monitoring usage in the U.S.Between 2017-19 Indianapolis had more than 8,300 people on pretrial monitors and 14,300 on post-trial monitors. By early 2020 more than 4,000 people were on a monitor at any given moment. Individuals paid a $50 set-up fee …
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