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While many felons commit crimes that land them in jail for years at a time, there is a hefty group of individuals whose non-violent crimes send them to prison for a year or less. These individuals, who often will be released within a few months, have a vested interest in maintaining their day jobs, and an even greater desire to remain with their families. Amazingly, GPS tracking has created a way for both of these formerly impossible scenarios to be realized.

The Mendocino county jail in Ukiah, California recently implemented a system that allows non-violent inmates sentenced to a year or less in jail to do their time at home while holding down their former job. How, you might ask? The secret is continual monitoring via GPS tracking. Working inmates must wear a GPS-wired ankle bracelet throughout the duration of their sentence so that their whereabouts are constantly known by monitoring authorities. Weekly visits from prison authorities further ensure that regulations governing the at-home jail time are met. If there are any violations, the privilege will be revoked.

Besides being convenient for inmates, this program weekly saves the Mendocino county jail thousands of dollars because the jail is not responsible for feeding or housing the non-violent criminals. Authorities need only monitor their GPS tracking devices to make sure that they do not forgo the designated rules. And since inmates taking advantage of the opportunity to live at home must pay the jail $25 per day to monitor their whereabouts, it is a win-win situation for the criminal justice system.

For years, GPS has been used to monitor criminals on parole, particularly in situations where there is reason to believe that they pose a threat to society. However, the idea of using it to monitor inmates living outside of prison is an unprecedented phenomenon. And while this program has not been extensively used to date, its success has intrigued the criminal justice world.

More likely than not, we will see more widespread use of GPS technology as time goes on, given its convenience and money-saving abilities. For non-violent inmates and their families, there could be no better scenario. And since the inmates are non-violent and carefully monitored, there is little danger of them causing any harm to society. For the US government, that’s thousands fewer mouths to feed – and much less of the taxpayers’ money going into the criminal justice system.

Article Written by Greg Bartlett