Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, November 9, 1994 TAG: 9411090052
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: BOULDER, COLO. LENGTH: Medium
When former Judge Sol Wachtler of New York was ordered confined last year before his trial for harassing an ex-lover, he didn't spend any time behind bars.
Instead, he waited in the comfort of his own home - under electronic house arrest.
Wachtler, like thousands of others either awaiting trial or free on parole or probation - including Roanoke palm reader Lola Miller - was fitted with an electronic device that allowed court officials to keep track of his movements. Miller, who trades as Miss Stella, last week was ordered by a U.S. magistrate to wear an electronic monitoring device to prevent fleeing while awaiting trial on charges alleging fraud.
BI Inc., the Boulder-based company that developed the device, plans to continue offering products that help jails, prisons and probation officials do business.
Electronic home arrest and monitoring is based on identification technology developed by BI in the late 1970s to keep track of dairy cows.
Convicted criminals and people awaiting trial are electronically monitored through a tamper-proof, rubber-coated bracelet worn around one of their ankles.
The bracelet is attached to an electronic transmitter that sends an encoded signal to a receiver installed in the person's home whenever they are within range - usually up to about 200 feet. The receiver signals a computer at a monitoring center when the person travels outside the range.
When those being monitored deviate from their normal schedules, which are programmed into the monitoring center computer, authorities automatically are notified.
``We view our product as a real opportunity for corrections officials to get tough on crime,'' said David Hunter, BI's president and chief executive.
Federal, state and local corrections agencies are using the system in increasing numbers. They say it reduces costs and recidivism rates, frees prison space and allows offenders to maintain community and family ties.
More than 67,000 people in all 50 states, as well as Guam and Puerto Rico, are being monitored electronically. BI pioneered home arrest devices, offering the first in May 1984.
One reason electronic arrest is attractive is its low price. The cost of keeping a person under electronic confinement is less than half the cost of housing him or her at a federal prison, said Robert Altman, administrator of the U.S. Probation Office's home confinement program.
BI last year won a contract to provide equipment and monitoring services to the probation office, which now has about 1,400 offenders under electronic monitoring.
The cost per day, per offender of electronic monitoring, including equipment and supervision, is $19.55, Altman said. In 1992, the latest year for which figures are available, the cost of keeping an offender in prison was $56.84 a day.
``And there's an added feature: When you have someone in the community, they are a taxpayer, not a tax burden, because they are able to go to work,'' he said.
``Of all the money we spend on home confinement, we collect 43 percent from the offenders,'' Altman said of the federal probation program.
BI developed the technology used in 65 percent to 70 percent of the monitoring equipment in the United States today. And a BI unit, BI Monitoring Corp., monitors about half the people under electronic home arrest nationwide.
BI's electronic arrest concept grew from technology first developed to identify dairy cows and keep track of their individual diets and milking schedules, Hunter said. That system uses a computer to communicate with remote radio chips attached to the cows.
The company also offers a line of companion products for electronic monitoring, including a device that can detect alcohol on the breath of people being monitored and a hand-held device that can detect when those being electronically monitored are inside a given building.
by CNB