WI: LOSING TRACK: Wisconsin doubles GPS monitoring despite five years of malfunctions, unnecessary jailings
Since he had his supervision transferred to his home state of Wisconsin in late 2016, McCormick has been repeatedly thrown in jail. He lost a job. And he continues to be disturbed by corrections officials calling him — sometimes in the middle of the night.
McCormick says these barriers to reintegrating into the community stem from a GPS ankle bracelet, which he was not required to wear in Minnesota but is required by Wisconsin to wear for life. As of January, Wisconsin monitored 1,258 offenders on GPS devices at an annual cost of about $9.7 million.
Five years after the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism documented serious problems with the state’s GPS monitoring program for offenders — false alerts that have landed offenders in jail, disrupting family lives and causing them to lose jobs — inefficiencies and inaccuracies with the system remain, according to state and county records and 16 offenders interviewed for this story.
Such problems have led some law enforcement and other officials to doubt the program’s ability to ensure public safety and assist offenders in reintegrating into their communities.
Since the Center’s 2013 report, the cost of the program and the number of offenders under monitoring have roughly doubled. Lawmakers never followed through on calls to study the system in the wake of the Center’s report. State officials have been unable to produce records of any evaluation of the system’s reliability or effectiveness.
In this current report, the Center found numerous service requests and complaints related to bracelets failing to hold a charge. In February, a bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced a bill that would make it a felony for anyone on GPS monitoring to intentionally fail to charge his or her bracelet.
The state is drawing up a new request for bids for GPS monitoring equipment. Lawmakers are considering extending the length of the contract from three years to seven to entice additional bidders. Bill sponsor Rep. Ed Brooks, R-Reedsburg, said the current vendor, Boulder, Colorado-based BI Inc., is planning a 50 percent price hike unless the contract is lengthened.
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I think the system needs to be redone. For example, the offender listed that moved from Minnesota to Wisconsin shouldn’t have to be on the bracelet, since he didn’t have to be on it in the state he was charged in. After some research, that guy hasn’t been in trouble since he was 20, and was charged when he was 19…taking a plea deal, not admitting but not contesting. He obviously has been in treatment and doing good. With that, those like him shouldn’t have to be on the bracelets, and would be easier on the taxpayers in not making them wear it. I agree with both “Joe123” and “no hope”‘s comments on here.
Is this the United States, or Nazi Germany of 2018? Reading about what these people, former offenders, have to live with after they’ve served their punishment is like living through a nightmare.
couldn’t be an easier solution here. Anyone that is imprisoned or charged because the monitor system isn’t or didn’t work should sue the state. get enough law suits like the ones against us and everything will go away. if the system is flawed it will only take a couple suits before the judges see that the system just doesn’t work and all of this goes away.