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A sk The Atlantic's Polit ics edit or Ga r a n ce Fr a n k e-Ru t a a bou t Oba m a 's post -con v en t ion bou n ce, t h e Liby a effect , a n d m or e. Rea d m or e

Prison Without Walls

Incarceration in America is a failure by almost any measure. But w hat if the prisons could be turned inside out, w ith convicts released into society under constant electronic surveillance? Radical though it may seem, early experiments suggest that such a science-fiction scenario might cut crime, reduce costs, and even prove more just.
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Fredrik Broden

ONE SNOWY NIGHT last winter, I walked into a pizzeria in Morrisv ille, Pennsy lv ania, with my right pant leg hiked up my shin. A pager-size black box was strapped to my sockless ankle, and another, somewhat larger unit dangled in a holster on my belt. Together, the two items make up a tracking dev ice called the BI Ex acuTrack AT: the former is designed to be tamper-resistant, and the latter broadcasts the wearers location to a monitoring company v ia GPS. The dev ice is commonly associated with paroled sex offenders, who wear it so authorities can keep an ey e on their mov ements. Thus my ex periment: an online guide had specified that the restaurant I was v isiting was a family joint. Would the moms and dads, confronted with my anklet, identify me as a possible predator and hustle their kids back out into the cold? Well, no, not in this case. Not a soul took any notice of the gizmos I wore. The whole rig is surprisingly small and unobtrusiv e, and it allowed me to eat my slice in peace. Indeed, ov er the few day s that I posed as a monitored man, the closest I came to feeling a real stigma was an encounter I had at a Holiday Inn ice machine, where a bearded trucker ty pe gav e me a wider berth than I might otherwise hav e ex pected. All in all, it didnt seem like such a terrible fate. Unlike most of Ex acuTracks clientele, of course, I wore my dev ice by choice and only briefly , to J UST IN
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find out how it felt and how people reacted to it. By contrast, a real sex offenderor any of a v ariety of other lawbreakers, including killers, check bouncers, thiev es, and drug usersmight wear the unit or one like it for y ears, or ev en decades. He (and the offender is generally a he) would wear it all day and all night, into the shower and under the sheetsperhaps with an AC adapter cord snaking out into a wall socket for charging. The dev ice would enable the monitoring company to follow his ev ery mov e, from home to work to the store, and, in consultation with a parole or probation officer, to keep him away from kindergartens, play grounds, Jonas Brothers concerts, and other places where kids congregate. Should he decide to snip off the anklet (the band is rubber, and would succumb easily to pruning shears), a sev ered cable would alert the company that he had tampered with the unit, and absent a v ery good ex cuse he would likely be sent back to prison. Little wonder that the law-enforcement officer who installed my Ex acuTrack noted that he was doing me a fav or by unbox ing a fresh unit: ov er their lifetimes, many of the trackers become encrusted with the filth and dead skin of prev ious bearers, some of whom are infected with prison plagues such as herpes or hepatitis. Officers clean the units and replace the straps between users, but I strongly preferred not to hav e any thing rubbing against my ankle that had spent y ears rubbing against someone elses. Increasingly , GPS dev ices such as the one I wore are looking like an appealing alternativ e to conv entional incarceration, as it becomes ev er clearer that, in the United States at least, traditional prison has become more or less sy nony mous with failed prison. By almost any metric, our practice of locking large numbers of people behind bars has prov ed at best ineffectiv e and at worst a national disgrace. According to a recent Pew report, 2.3 million Americans are currently incarcerated enough people to fill the city of Houston. Since 1 983, the number of inmates has more than tripled and the total cost of corrections has jumped six fold, from $1 0.4 billion to $68.7 billion. In California, the cost per inmate has kept pace with the cost of an Iv y League education, at just shy of $50,000 a y ear. This might make some sense if crime rates had also tripled. But they hav ent: rather, ev en as crime has fallen, the sentences serv ed by criminals hav e grown, thanks in large part to mandatory minimums and draconian three-strikes rulespolitically popular measures that hav e shown little deterrent effect but hav e left the prison sy stem ov erflowing with inmates. The v ogue for incarceration might also make sense if the prisons repaid society s inv estment by releasing reformed inmates who behav ed better than before they were locked up. But that isnt the case either: half of those released are back in prison within three y ears. Indeed, research by the economists Jesse Shapiro of the Univ ersity of Chicago and M. Keith Chen of Y ale indicates that the stated purpose of incarceration, which is to place prisoners under harsh conditions on the assumption that they will be scared straight, is activ ely counterproductiv e. Such conditionsand

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U.S. prisons are astonishingly harsh, with as many as 20 percent of male inmates facing sex ual assaultty pically harden criminals, making them more v iolent and predatory . Essentially , when we lock someone up today , we are agreeing to pay a large (and growing) sum of money merely to put off dealing with him until he is released in a few y ears, often as a greater menace to society than when he went in. Dev ices such as the Ex acuTrack, along with other adv ances in both the way s we monitor criminals and the way s we punish them for their transgressions, suggest a rev olutionary possibility : that we might turn the conv entional prison sy stem inside out for a substantial number of inmates, doing away with the current, ex pensiv e array of guards and cells and fences, in fav or of a regimen of close, constant surv eillance on the outside and swift, certain punishment for any dev iations from an established, legally unobjectionable routine. The potential upside is enormous. Not only might such a sy stem sav e billions of dollars annually , it could theoretically produce far better outcomes, training conv icts to become law-abiders rather than more-ruthless lawbreakers. The ultimate result could be lower crime rates, at a reduced cost, and with considerably less inhumanity in the bargain. Moreov er, such a change would in fact be less radical than it might at first appear. An underappreciated fact of our penitentiary sy stem is that of all Americans serv ing time at any giv en moment, only a third are actually behind bars. The restsome 5 million of themare circulating among the free on conditional superv ised release either as parolees, who are freed from prison before their sentences conclude, or as probationers, who walk free in lieu of jail time. These prisoners-on-the-outside hav e in fact outnumbered the incarcerated for decades. And recent innov ations, both technological and procedural, could enable such programs to adv ance to a stage where they put the traditional model of incarceration to shame. In a number of ex perimental cases, they already hav e. Dev ices such as the one I wore on my leg already allow tens of thousands of conv icts to walk the streets relativ ely freely , impeded only by the knowledge that if they loiter by a schooly ard, say , or near the house of the ex -girlfriend they threatened, or on a street corner known for its crack trade, the law will come to find them. Compared with incarceration, the cost of such surv eillance is minusculemere dollars per day and monitoring has few of the hardening effects of time behind bars. Nor do all the innov ations being dev eloped depend on technology . Similar efforts to control criminals in the wild are under way in pilot programs that demand adherence to onerous parole guidelines, such as frequent, random drug testing, and that prov ide for immediate punishment if the parolees fail. The result is the same: conv icts who might once hav e been in prison now walk among us unrecognizedlike pod people, or Canadians. There are, of course, many thousands of dangerous felons who cant be trusted on the loose. But if

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we ex tended this form of enhanced, superv ised release ev en to just the nonv iolent offenders currently behind bars, we would empty half our prison beds in one swoop. Inev itably , some of those released would take the pruning-shears route. And some would offend again. But then, so too do those conv icts released at the end of their brutal, hardening sentences under our current sy stem. And ev en accepting a certain failure rate, by nearly any measure such prisons without bars would represent a giant step forward for justice, criminal rehabilitation, and society . IN THE 1 8TH CENTURY , the English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham designed the Panopticon, a hy pothetical prison. Inside the Panopticon (the name is deriv ed from the Greek word for all-seeing), the prisoners are arranged in a ring of cells surrounding their guard, who is concealed in a tower in the center. The idea is that the guard controls the prisoners through his presumed observ ation: they constantly imagine his ey es on them, ev en when hes looking elsewhere. Bentham promoted the concept of the Panopticon for much the same reasons that spur criminal-justice innov ation today a ballooning prison population and the need for a cheap solution with light manpower demands. Whereas the guard in Benthams day had only two ey es, howev er, today s watcher can be v irtually all-seeing, thanks to GPS monitoring technology . The modern prisoner, in other words, need not wonder whether he is being observ ed; he can be sure that he is, and at all times. The hub of the American penal sy stems largest open-air Panopticon is in the Indianapolis suburb of Anderson, population 57 ,496, at the call center of a company called BI Incorporated. The firm manufactures and serv ices the ankle dev ice I test-drov e, as well as a suite of other law-enforcement gadgets designed to track offenders. Though BI has a handful of riv als in the monitoring business, it is the most prominent and best-known, with 55,000 offenders wearing BI anklets at any giv en moment. (The company monitors another 1 0,000 using lower-tech means: for instance, by hav ing them call from particular landlines at designated times.) I drov e to Anderson from Indianapolis, past clapboard houses and cornfields, to v isit BIs offices, located on a few discreet and highly secure floors abov e the local branch of Key Bank. I was buzzed up to meet Jennifer White, the BI v ice president in charge of monitoring. From her office window, we looked out not on the backs of the 30,000 offenders this branch monitors, but on the sedate midwestern bedroom community that is, by her description, a little bit less happening than Muncie, 20 miles away . Ev en the sleepy streets of Anderson hav e their secrets, though. White told me that below us were about 1 20 criminals with BI ankletsroughly one for ev ery 500 residents in the town. White, an Indiana nativ e, has been at BI since 1 988. Ov er a turkey salad from Bob Ev ans, she
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ex plained that the company s first clients (as the monitored are alway s called) were not human beings but Holsteins. In 1 97 8, BI began selling sy stems that allowed dairy farmers to dispense feed to their cows automatically . The company fitted a radio-frequency tag on each cows ear so that when the cow approached the feed dispenser, a sensor in the latter caused it to drop a ration of fodder. If the same cow returned, the sensor recognized the unique signal of the tag and prev ented the cow from getting a second helping until after enough time had passed for her to digest the first. (The worlds of bov ine and criminal management hav e in fact been oddly intertwined for many y ears. Just as modern abattoirs hav e studied the colors that can distract and agitate cows during their final momentsthus ruining their meat with adrenalineprisons hav e painted their walls in soothing shades to minimize anx iety and aggression in their inmates.) In the 1 980s, BI ex panded into tethering people. As an early mov er in the outpatient prison industry , BI grew fast, and the Anderson office contains a one-room museum of the bulky dev ices from its early day s, some the size of a ham-radio set. The company now counts tracking people as its core business, and as a sideline it facilitates their reentry into society , through treatment programs and counseling. BI monitors criminals in all 50 states, ev ery one from people who owe child support to ax murderers, White told me. Most use the lowest-tech tracking equipment, a radio-frequency -based technology that monitors house arrest. The sy stem works simply : y ou keep a radio beacon in y our home and a transmitter around y our ankle. If y ou wander too far from y our beacon, an alert goes out to the BI call center in Anderson, which then notifies y our probation officer that y ou hav e left y our designated zoneas Martha Stewart allegedly did during her BImonitored house arrest in 2005, earning a three-week ex tension of her fiv e-month sentence. The truly rev olutionary BI dev ices, though, are the new generation of GPS trackers, which monitor criminals real-time locations down to a few meters, enabling BI to control their mov ements almost as if they were marionettes. If y ou were a paroled drunk driv er, for instance, y our parole officer could mandate that y ou stay home ev ery day from dusk until dawn, be at y our workplace from nine to fiv e, and go to and from work following a specific routeand BI would monitor y our mov ements to ensure compliance. If y our parole terms included not entering a bar or liquor shop, the dev ice could be programmed to start an alert process if y ou lingered near such a location for more than 60 seconds. That alert could take the form of an immediate notice to the monitorsHes at Drinkies againor ev en a spoken warning emanating from the dev ice itself, instructing y ou to leav e the area or face the consequences. Another BI sy stem, recently deploy ed with promising results, features an electrostatic pad that presses against the offenders upper arm at all times, chemically tasting sweat for signs of alcohol. (In May , starlet Lindsay Lohan was ordered to wear a similar dev ice, manufactured by a BI competitor, after v iolating her probation stemming from DUI charges.)

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To see the BI sy stems at work is to realize that Jeremy Bentham was thinking small. The call center consists of just a few rows of desks, with a dozen or so men and women wearing headsets and speaking in Spanish and English to their customers (the law-enforcement agents, as distinguished from the tracked clients). Each sits in front of a computer monitor, and at the click of a mouse can summon up a screen detailing the mov ements of a client as far away as Guam, ensuring not only that he av oids ex clusion zonesschooly ards or bars or former associates homes, depending on the circumstancesbut also that he makes his way to designated inclusion zones at appointed times. As a fail-safe against any technological glitch, whether accidental or malicious, BI is immensely proud of its backup sy stems, which boast an ultrasecure data room and ex treme redundancy : if, say , a tox ic-gas cloud were to wipe out the town of Anderson, the last act of the staff there would be to flip the switches div erting all call traffic to BIs corporate office in Boulder, Colorado, where a team capable of taking ov er instantly in case of disaster is alway s on duty . I asked Jamie Roberts, a call-center employ ee who had prev iously been a BI customer as a corrections officer in Terre Haute, Indiana, to show me a parolee on the mov e, and in seconds he pulled up the profile of a criminal in Newport News, V irginia. The y oung mans parole officer had used a Microsoft Bing online map to build a large irregular poly gon around his high schoolan inclusion zone that would guarantee an alert if he failed to show up for class on time, ev ery day . Roberts showed me one offender after another: names and maps, liv es scheduled down to the minute. There was a gambler whose anklet was set to notify Roberts if the client approached the waterfront, because he might try his luck on the gaming boats; an addict who couldnt return to the street corners where he used to score crack; and an alcohol abuser who had to squeeze himself into an inclusion zone around a church basement for an Alcoholics Anony mous meeting from 9 to 1 0 p.m., three times a week. A strict parole officer could plausibly sketch out a complete weekly routine for his parolee, with specific times when he would hav e to leav e home and specific stations he would hav e to tag throughout the week. He might allow, or ev en require, the parolee to go to the grocery store on a Sunday afternoon, and go for a jog along an authorized route ev ery morning. Roberts pulled up another Bing map for me, and set in motion a faster-than-real-time play back of one clients day . As his dot carefully skirted the ex clusion zones around a school and a park, stay ing away from kids because of the absolute certainty that BI would report him if he did not, his life on the outside looked fully set out in adv ance, as if he mov ed not on his own feet but on rails laid by his parole officer. For BI clients, technology has made detection of any dev iation a near certainty and with detection a swift response, one that often leads straight back to the Big House.

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Abelli

2 y ears ago

After Catch and Release, By Margaret Talbot, New Am erica Foundation The Atlantic Monthly | February 1 , 2 003 http://www.newam erica.net/publ... another progressiv e article in a nation with world wide highest prisoner rate. Howev er, lawm akers follow the m oney trail and push tough on crim e and m erciless public opinion. Will the follow up article follow 7 y ears later?
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mesorensen
Graem e-

2 y ears ago

An excellent and v ery interesting article, but one sentence bothers m e: "rather, ev en as crim e has fallen, the sentences serv ed by crim inals hav e grown". Where is the ev idence that the sentence shouldn't be written: "as the sentences serv ed by crim inals hav e grown, crim e has fallen"? The obv ious argum ent is that, y eah, are prisons are a discrace, etc. etc., but at least crim e is down because we'v e locked up ev ery troublem aker out there, and I'm wondering how y ou would counter that. Thanks.

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wsinger

2 y ears ago in reply to m esorensen

If we're honest, we'll adm it that incarceration rates and crim e rates hav e a v ery com plex relationship. There are a couple way s of looking at this im portant question. In a 2 005 briefing paper, the nonprofit Sentencing Project exam ined US incarceration and crim e rates ov er tim e. The paper reported "no consistent relationship between the rate at which incarceration increased and the rate at which crim e decreased." During the 1 9 9 0s, states like California and Texas dram atically increased the num ber of people incarcerated, and they experienced significant drops in the crim e rate. But at the sam e tim e, the crim e rate in New York fell slightly m ore, ev en though New York's prison population grew relativ ely slowly . See also a v ery straightforward chart Figure 5 on page 7 , showing that the US crim e rate was roughly the sam e in 2 003 as in 1 9 7 0, ev en though the US incarceration rate grew fiv efold during that tim e. Others, including the author of a recent article in The Econom ist, hav e noted that the US has by far the highest incarceration rate in the world. If there were a straightforward connection between locking up m ore people and reducing crim e, we'd expect that the US would also hav e one of the world's lowest crim e rates. While v ariations in legal and statistical standards v astly com plicate international com parisons (and ruin at least one wikipedia table), it's safe to say that the US is not the safest country in the world, or close to it. To m e, Mr. Wood's assertion seem s well grounded.
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mesorensen
wsinger-

2 y ears ago in reply to wsinger

Thank y ou for the response. That's good inform ation, and a solid counter to the argum ent I'v e heard.
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JamesonK

2 y ears ago

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It's a good thing the picture is of a white m an. Can't hav e it any other way .
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ALICEDEWONDER

2 y ears ago

Will we be putting them on our politicians as well? - PLEASE!

3 people lik ed t h is. LIKE REPLY

Jozef_2

2 y ears ago

High tim e we did this. What a waste of resources and hum an liv es to hav e so m any nonv iolent offenders in prison. Although technology is intrusiv e it can help to distinguish the guilty from the innocent and to m anage offenders.
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Rob Tierney

1 y ear ago in reply to Jozef_2

Good points in article and in the com m ents. Re: intrusiv eness - if som eone wants to retain his or her "rights" to priv acy , he or she should steer clear of crim inal activ ity . People need to take m ore responsibility for their indiv idual behav ior and be held accountable.
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VCubed

2 y ears ago

In SF, CA, those ankle 'bracelets' cost offenders $1 ,000 per m onth, paid to a priv ate corporation, not to the city /district/state. As with all legal m atters, what y ou can pay a lawy er is what really decides how long y ou stay cuffed & pay ing. You can be law-abiding, in school, working, and still hav e to wear it and pay , unless y ou can get a lawy er to fight it.
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jailbait

2 y ears ago in reply to VCubed

True, the m oney is paid to a priv ate corporation by the indiv idual who is accused of a crim e, but the taxpay ers don't hav e to foot the bill. When I was wearing m ine, I was going to work ev ery day and taking classes at the local Univ ersity . That being said, I was wearing it for a reason despite being law-abiding 9 9 .9 % of the tim e. My lawy er had nothing to do with m e getting it taken off, but m y good behav ior did. They could tell I was being good too, because they were watching m e! I do agree that states and local gov ernm ents should think about taking this serv ice in house as a rev enue producing opportunity instead of farm ing it out to corporations.
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menckenlite

2 y ears ago

Henry Louis Mencken: First they pass laws [create technology ] to use against the sons of bitches. Then they use them against the rest of us. Technology is am oral. Historically ev ery new inv ention was used for both good and ev il. What is to stop crim inals e.g. from placing m onitoring dev ices on v ehicles to rev eal when a person is far enough away for his/her hom e?
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Eric Bauer

2 y ears ago in reply to m enckenlite

What's to stop them now, that kind of technology already exisits.

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phidipides

2 y ears ago in reply to Eric Bauer

Uhhh...don't look now...but this is being done to y ou without warrant through y our cell phone and OnStar by pinging cell towers or using y our phones built in GPS. You ARE an inm ate. You just don't realize it.

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http://www.opednews.com /articl... http://paranoia.dubfire.net/2 0...

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menckenlite

2 y ears ago in reply to Eric Bauer

Police hav e and use a lot of high tech weapons that they do not broadcast to the public. If police use these high tech weapons y ou can be certain that organized crim e is also using them . Now that the US Gov ernm ent is run by the Crim e Fam ilies National Com m ission, the FBI and their obedient police agencies target critics of gov ernm ent and not crim inals. The recent arrests of ten Russian agents and quick return to Russia by Obam a's legal wizard AG indicates the attitude of the elected officials to crim inals -- Cov er it up. As Noam Chom sky observ ed the goal is to keep the herd bewildered.
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Matt Landry

2 y ears ago

"For optim ists of hum an nature, it is a m elancholy realization that the highest function of hum anity can be, to som e extent, outsourced to a plastic box." If som eone thinks that the conscience function of rem inding a person not to com m it crim es is "the highest function of hum anity ", then "optim ist" is not the word _I_ would use to describe that person...
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Stephane de Messieres

2 y ears ago

A fascinating article! Well-written and truly thought-prov oking. We need m ore discussion like this that recognizes the utter failure of status quo. With appreciation for the com m ents abov e by 'm esorensen' and 'wsinger,' I'm surprised that Graem e Wood didn't ev en discuss ex ante deterrence in the article. In other words, if crim inals prefer tracking to prison then wouldn't that dim inish the (hy pothetical) deterring power of incarceration? Personally I'm not persuaded that incarceration is v ery effectiv e as a deterrent to crim e - especially after seeing the com m ent by 'wsinger' - but I know a lot of folks believ e it is and I think it should be addressed at least briefly in the article.

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spirukas goblinono

2 y ears ago

Thanks 1 bobcohn (Twitter) for the link to an article about surv eillance of prisoners but I suspect there is a lot m ore to this than m eets the ey e, or ears, or ankles. Prisons hav e becom e a big business ( I forget the nam e of the com pany that is a m ajor stakeholder in airlines, credit cards, security and prisons all ov er the world - Google knows!) but I don't think that priv ate enterprise controlling conv icted crim inals is a fair deal. It is not "m andatory m inim um s' and 'draconian 3 strike rules' that place people in prisons for the safety of society , but big business interests that are feeding off the paranoia of the 'clim ate of fear' foisted on the the public since the debacle of 9 /1 1 . It seem s easier for gov ernm ent to pass their problem s onto priv ate enterprise than actually address the factors that are leading to total cultural collapse of our society . I don't fall for the spin that this process 'cuts crim e', 'reduces costs' and aids m anagem ent of our penal colonies. What is does is fulfill George Orwell's prophecies of "1 9 84 " - we are com ing under increasing observ ation and recording of our activ ities, innocent or not, and we are slowly being indoctrinated to accept this as norm al - it is not! It is an infringem ent of our rights. Why don't we try doing som ething useful with our penal colonies if they are so ov ercrowded and unm anageable - like send them to desolate places on the planet to dev elop failed com m unities or wasted resources. Set them to work repairing the dam age the v am pire corporates do as they suck the resources and life out of this planet. Why not put them all to sea on floating prison farm s that scour the planet as m obile fix-it crews. Better still, why not just pack 'em all off to that 'Great Floating Pacific Garbage Patch' and set them to work for that Dutch group 'WHIM Architecture' to help fulfill that dream of turning all that floating rubbish into a com pact artificial island. Don't send 'em hom e alone where they can do drugs, don't get 'em behind walls busting up rocks and beating out car license plates - get them out recy cling refuse and doing housework around the planet!
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jailbait

2 y ears ago

I was recently on electronic surv eillance (white wom an in on a dom estic issue, in case y ou were

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wondering). The choice was giv en to m e to stay in jail for 1 0 day s (at the cost of the taxpay ers) or get out of jail and be m onitored by the Sherriff's office (at m y cost - roughly $1 5/day ). I was giv en an ankle m onitor, a hom e m onitor which plugged into the wall, and a bulking looking cel phone contraption which could pinpoint m y location and could tell if I had been drinking. As som eone who has been inv olv ed in drug and alcohol treatm ent in the past, this was BY FAR the m ost effectiv e m eans of getting m e to stop drinking and follow the rules set for m y release. (curfew, etc.) The certainty of being caught and the fear of returning to jail were v ery strong deterrents to m isbehav ing, with freedom being the reward. Treatm ent and AA m eetings actually m ade m e want to drink m ore because of the constant Pav lov ian rem inders of what I was m issing out on. The state I liv e in, Oregon, spends m ore on prisons than education. Why not shift this cost to the people who did the crim e and sav e the v ery expensiv e prisons for the v iolent crim inals who hav e to be locked up to keep society safe? Believ e m e, screwing up is not an option when the Sherriff's office is Big Brothering y our ev ery m ov e.
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Hackpiper

2 y ears ago in reply to jailbait

First off, good for y ou for straightening out! This really is a good idea, and a strong incentiv e to fly right. The prisons should be lim ited to the dangerous ones. Period. I dont think m ost people belong there under any circum stances. Ev ery one else should be on a sliding sy stem of work release, and m ore stringent controls and com m unity serv ice for those who dont stay clean. The idea is to keep all the but the worst as contributing m em bers of society . God be with y ou ..keep strong!
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Scott

2 y ears ago

Why not just outfit ev ery one with a tag at birth? Schools are already m onitoring kids to see where they go, the gov ernm ent can track y our car without a warrant, etc. Why stop at prisoners? Just allow the gov ernm ent to track ev ery one all the tim e. Ev en better, instead of sentencing people to prison, sentence them pick lettuce or work at McDonald's or be a CFO. That way , corporations won't hav e to pay em ploy ees--ev ery one can work for free! You jay walked--that's two y ears of m aking lattes for y ou!

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paintedreal

2 y ears ago

I really hav e a problem with hav ing sex offenders out on the street. Especially if they 'v e sexually m olested a child!!! Why not use these m onitors on drug dealers/drug users, or m ore white collar crim es? I don't care if y ou are being m onitored. If y ou'v e sexually m olested a child I don't think giv ing y ou a break is called for. Just m y opinion.
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Hackpiper

2 y ears ago in reply to paintedreal

Good point...BUT the "sex offender" registry has becom e a ludicrous kludge that lum ps all sorts of offenders - m ajor and m inor - together. Thus, the stupid schlubs caught by internet stings for underage pictures are on there right next to the potentially dangerous predators who hav e assaulted som eone. It's worse than worthless -- it ruins people for relativ ely m inor offenses, and actually m akes it m uch m ore difficult to ID the dangerous ones. You can thank the hideous "m andatory sentencing" rules - enacted at the behest of the self-serv ing "corrections industry " to fill up their prisons...and in response to rightist hy steria and ignorance - for this disaster. We need to get rid the registry and be m uch m ore precise about all this. If so, I would definitely agree that a real sex offender needs to prov e their reform bey ond a shadow before being released.
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Butch

2 y ears ago in reply to paintedreal

You couldn't be m ore right if y ou tried!! And I'm looking at it from a totally different perspectiv e than y ou are, believ e m e. I'v e serv ed tim e. One hell of a lot of tim e; Twenty -sev en y ears as a m atter of fact. I don't think there's any body on the planet that hates those child m olesting effers m ore than I do. As far as I'm concerned they shouldn't ev en waste tim e taking them to trial. Just drag the bastard out to the local landfill, set up a wood chipper, and feed them in, slowly !!! I m ay

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hav e serv ed ov er twenty -fiv e y ears of m y life in prison, but I didn't rape any one; I didn't rob any one; I didn't steal any thing, and I didn't m olest any child or m istreat any old people. All I did was defend m y self, against the son of som eone with too m uch local power in a rinky -dink berg. I saw so m any people in prison that nev er should hav e been there that I still shake m y head when I think about it. Part of the problem that not m any see or understand is the prison industry has grown so large and has so m any people working for it that it would be a m ajor hit for the local econom ies to downsize prisons by putting ankle m onitors on all the ones that could reduce the incarceration rate. And believ e m e, there are som e good people that work for the departm ent of corrections in probably all of the states, but there's also a bunch of Neanderthal S.O.B.s that couldn't get a job any where else working there. Regardless, they contribute to the local coffers and no politician wants to be the one to downsize prisons or reduce the incarceration rates. I hav e sev eral friends that hav e serv ed ov er thirty y ears of their liv es where I was incarcerated. One has serv ed ov er forty -fiv e y ears; From the tim e he was eighteen y ears old, and for being in a car with another guy that pulled up to a conv enience store and robbed and killed the clerk. Totally senseless!! But as I said. Don't look for the m onitor issue to jum p into high gear any tim e soon. It m akes way too m uch sense!
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Aliza Panitz

1 y ear ago in reply to Butch

It could be worse -- in Louisiana prostitutes who offer v aginal sex get m isdem eanor conv ictions, and prostitutes who offer oral or anal sex ("unnatural acts") get tagged as sex offenders, som etim es ending up on the registry for life. (No, not the johns, just the sextrade workers.) When y ou get ten postcards a y ear announcing a new sex offender in y our neighborhood, y ou tend to ignore all of them ...
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Alan Dike

2 y ears ago

The hav e m ade a dev ice that could fool GPS receiv ers back in 2 008 that would fit in a briefcase. Turn that on, and y ou hav e a tim e period where y ou can go any where and y our transm itter say s y ou are still at hom e. Get back before the battery runs out and y ou just by passed the sy stem . Neat idea, but it's too easy to by pass.

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Raymond Lau

2 y ears ago

But what if the crack trade com es to them ?

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nayrki

2 y ears ago

There are a few m ajor problem s with this idea : 1 . GPS tracking dev ices are far from tam per proof. Those ankle bracelets can be rem ov ed by m any people (dependent on body ty pe) without setting off the tam per detector. 2 . Ev en if the tam per protection works, the police would not be able to arriv e before the conv ict escaped. And with m illions of m ore bracelets to track, conv icts would be dropping those things left and right.
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ItsMySoapBox

2 y ears ago

There was a Sy Fi m ov ie in 1 9 9 1 nam ed Wedlock, with Rutger Haeur and Mim i Rodgers. In this unisex prison, each inm ate has an unknown partner; when the two are separated by m ore than 1 00 y ards, or they approach a wireless boundary , an explosiv e collar kills both inm ates. I think we could adapt that with GPS; and lim it the inm ates to a certain radius or house arrest. The unit could be used to m onitor alcohol use, lewd and lasciv ious behav ior by pedophiles (increased heart rate, priapism , etc.). Instead of the explosiv e ty pe of collar used in the m ov ie, although tem pting, how about an incapacitating shock deliv ered to render the inm ate/parole helpless and ready for pickup to a lock down facility .
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Matthew McDermott

2 y ears ago in reply to ItsMy SoapBox

This I like! These dev ices should be coupled with a Taser-like dev ice which can deliv er an

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incapacitating shock. The dev ice should offer a warning, such as a noise or v ibration, to the offender. Should the offender fail to leav e a restricted area, call the 5 O's and drop his ass to the ground and hit him ev ery X m inutes until the police take him off to do his tim e inside! Fear of being caught is good, fear of BIG pain, then getting caught is better!
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Marty_Mae

2 y ears ago

The concept is great, but what about the ones that m urder and rape, especially those who choose the elderly and children. After working in a prison sy stem for 1 7 y ears y ou realize why we hav e a prison sy stem . We do lock up too m any for petty crim es, m ore serious offenders should be behind bars. We do need alternativ e such as Drug Courts which hav e a v ery high success rate, but we will still need places to incarcerate the worst of the worst. Martha M Schm idt
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CaughtMeScreaming

2 y ears ago

I was just in a random coffee shop in Orlando today and a chick m entioned this article to m e. Id lov e to chat, we should hav e exchanged em ails :) I hope y ou read this and reply ! Lov e light and blessings!
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8 inch gps crv

1 y ear ago in reply to CaughtMeScream ing

It's a good thing the picture is of a white m an. Can't hav e it any other way .
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SC

2 y ears ago

I appreciate any focus on the "hidden" crisis in Am erica: The prison sy stem . Of course, the suggested

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alternativ e as com m endable as it is, only offers a degree of prev entativ e m easure. We need deeper prev entativ e solutions. See m y sm all suggestion: http://thinkpoint.wordpress.co... Stev e Cornell www.thinkpoint.wordpress.com
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juliannemckinney

2 y ears ago

Im glad to see that y ou are cognizant of potential abuses in this prison without walls sy stem , Mr. Wood. Why not explore the possibility further? Consider, for exam ple, the possibility of recruiting 1 5-to-2 0 percent of the population as v olunteer enforcers of this sy stem . They can be recruited from all lev els of society , especially at the neighborhood lev el and in em ploy m ent env ironm ents. The hom es of these v olunteer do-gooders can be used as bases of operation where the latest in electronic surv eillance and weapons technologies can be em ploy ed for purposes of persuading any intransigent paroled felon of the need for total obedience, as a m inim um . These electronic technologies will ensure that the paroled felon is im aged and tracked any where and ev ery where in his hom e around the clock. And just to keep the dastardly creature on his toes, especially if he display s perceiv able attitude problem s, he can be periodically blasted on all points of his body with an array of wall-penetrating electronic frequencies (radar, acoustical, m icrowav e, infrared, etc.), ev en for long hours at a tim e. This is an excellent m eans of raising his body tem perature to unholy lev els, while sim ultaneously inflicting extrem es of pain. A sim ple m eans of ensuring that the m isfit knows that he is under nonstop surv eillance and had better learn to obey . As to the tiny v oice of his conscience (referenced at the conclusion of y our article), what better way to install such a stim ulant than by m eans of the v oice-to-skull m icrowav e technologies recently prom oted by the Departm ent of Defense as being their V2 K or V2 S capabilities. When on the street, this ev il felon can be followed and taunted by recruited, organized groups of strangers whov e been apprised of this way ward creatures psy chological and phy sical peculiarities and sensitiv ities. (After all, they will need to taunt som ething.) And while on the job? A felon being em ploy ed? Not likely . Howev er, if this m isbegotten creature should actually presum e to find em ploy m ent, then the sam e ty pes of recruited, organized groups of (co-workers) can continue the taunting while on the job, while also sabotaging his work product, thereby hastening his rem ov al back to the streets.

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A process that is guaranteed to enforce obedience, if not m adness, v iolence and/or suicide. And all v ery cost-effectiv e, as well. Fifteen-to-twenty percent of our God-fearing population would be m ore than happy to keep paroled felons on the straight-and-narrow for m ere peanuts and a little personal stroking and recognition. What bills need to be paid can be cov ered by the corporations who need a basis for testing their latest im aging, surv eillance and electronic weapons sy stem s. What do y ou think, Mr. Wood? Far-fetched? Of course. But, nev ertheless, som ething to consider as being an effectiv e prison without walls.
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enigma44

1 y ear ago in reply to juliannem ckinney

Dear Miss Mckinney , I read y our com m ents som e tim e ago and had been m eaning to respond to them . At first I felt v ery angry about y our com m ents, but after reading them a second tim e, I guessed that it was tongue in cheek. Do y ou know som eone who is liv ing this out? I do, and believ e m e, it is v ery m uch in the present.
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caseym54

2 y ears ago

Problem with GPS/cell solutions like ExecTrak (and hundreds of others) is that they need large batteries, frequently recharged. If the felon wants to abscond all they really need to do is "forget" to charge it and in a few day s they 're free to go. The only thing they 'd hav e to fear is a quick police response to the lack of signal. Not the way to bet.
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Bernecky

2 y ears ago

More from the stone-walls-do-not-a-prison-m ake file: "Consider a related issue: the clearly illegal subsidies China prov ides to its clean-energy industry . These subsidies should hav e led to a form al com plaint from Am erican businesses." That's repo m an Willy Lom an Krugm an, in the process of snatching the idea of death panels from the

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m inds of enslav ed laborers, leav ing them with their original idea: solar panels. http://www.ny tim es.com /2 01 0/09 /1 3 /opinion/1 3 krugm an.htm l?ref= opinion.
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al_frick

1 y ear ago

Prison rates continue to rise ev en though crim e rates drop?????? Am I the only one seeing the correlation between the two? Think Mcfly Think. Bad people locked up = less bad people on the street to com m it crim es. This is another pathetic article condoning additional crim e. The m odern-day "liberal/progressiv e" is a joke of a hum an.
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al_frick

1 y ear ago

Prison rates continue to clim b while crim e rates hav e decreased? Am I the only one here who see the correlation? Think McFly think. May be just m ay be, the m ore cockroaches we lock up, the less v iolent our streets are. It's one thing to liv e insulated in som e suburban hom e, untouched by crim e, like no doubt y ou are. It's another thing to be on the front lines in som e inner city while gangbangers kill each other in front of y ou. This entire article basically boils down to: 1 ) It costs too m uch to im prison scum . Erego, we should free them . Heck, if all I had to do was wear a m onitoring tracker, I m ay just m urder the author of this inane article to prov e a point.
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Guest

1 y ear ago

How about when released they hav e REAL HOUSING & REAL TRAINING & REAL JOB?
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Mike Luke

1 y ear ago

its a brilliant step in the process of chipping all people, please wake up
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Mike Luke

1 y ear ago

also why are all these priv ately owned prisons being built across the US?? is it m ay be because what we think is our gov ernm ent is actually a registered corporation???? IRS and the Federal Reserv e included???? why is it that people still think their "gov ernm ent" is classified as such???
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sciatic nerve pain

7 m onths ago

Life's not THAT m uch of a prison....it's what y ou m ake of it. Life is good, fun, when the ride stops at death...
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