- Military satellites designed to guide
nuclear missiles are being used to monitor prison parolees and probationers
in a technological advance designed to reduce the nation's skyrocketing
prison population. But critics say it also raises the specter of an Orwellian
future.
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- The ComTrak monitoring system uses 24
Defense Department satellites orbiting 12,500 miles above the Earth to
track 100 people in nine states. The people under surveillance range from
sex offenders in Chicago to juvenile delinquents in New Jersey. The cost
of monitoring each person is $12.50 per day.
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- It is a long way from a system originally
designed by the Defense Department to help guide nuclear missiles. The
Pentagon began leasing satellite time, allowing others to use the satellites,
after the Cold War ended. "It's bullets to plowshares," says
Jack Lamb, president and CEO of Advanced Business Sciences Inc., the Omaha-based
company that developed the ComTrak system.
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- The system has three main components:
a bracelet the size of a wristwatch, a 3-pound personal tracking unit that
resembles a walkie-talkie, and the battery charger/base that is kept at
the monitored person's house and transmits information by telephone to
a monitoring center . If the bracelet is broken or removed or the wearer
is more than 50 feet from the tracking unit, an alarm is sent to the monitoring
center.
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- The system is programmed to set up zones
where a person monitored can and cannot go, depending on the crime committed.
For example, people with drunken-driving convictions can be tracked to
set off an alarm if they enter local bars. Exclusion zones for a sexual
predator can include schools and parks in a designated area. And an abusive
husband can be tracked to ensure he stays clear of his wife's workplace,
home or places she visits.
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- When a person being monitored enters
an exclusion zone, the tracking unit sends an automatic alert to monitoring
centers in Omaha. Law enforcement authorities are alerted within minutes.
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- At night, the tracker is placed in the
charger, which downloads all of a person's movements that day - right down
to the precise route the person took to work - and sends the record of
movements to the monitoring center.
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- Lamb says the potential for growth is
"phenomenal." There are nearly 4 million people under some form
of supervision in the USA. Of those, only about 11,000 are monitored electronically
under the old system, which is unable to track a person's movements once
he or she has left home. Some see the new system as a tool for judges grappling
with a prison and jail population of 1.8 million people at a cost of more
than $40 per day for each inmate.
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- Percy Luney Jr., president of the National
Judicial College at the University of Nevada, Reno, where judges receive
training in such issues as alternative sentencing, says the system "gives
judges an option for keeping people out of jail and away from all the negative
influences there. It's also a cost-saver for the taxpayer."
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- Lamb says his system also is an improvement
over older technology, which can tell only if those being monitored leave
home during restricted hours. "The problem with the old system is
once they leave home, you have no idea where they are or what they are
doing," Lamb says.
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- Others involved in the prison industry,
from defense lawyers to probation and parole officers and judges, acknowledge
that the advanced monitoring system has potential. But there are some concerns
about how far the use of such surveillance will go.
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- Paul Rothstein, a law professor at Georgetown
University, says the system has the potential "to change the face
of law enforcement and incarceration." Nevertheless, he sees the "potential
for creating a monster."
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- Rothstein is concerned that the advances
in technology could result in more and more people being subjected to electronic
monitoring - not just those on parole.
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- "You could end up with the majority
of the population under some kind of surveillance by the government,"
he says.
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- Jack King, spokesman for the National
Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, says his organization supports
the electronic monitoring. He sees it as especially helpful in the case
of someone who should be out on bail but is too destitute to pay it.
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- He says he is concerned about such technology
being used to monitor people who have served their sentences and paid their
debts to society.
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- "If it's to track someone who has
done his full term, like a registered sex offender or a formerly dangerous
felon, then the use of this technology becomes Orwellian with all the dangers
to all our freedoms that suggests," King says. "Who would they
be tracking next?"
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