Deputy: Grant could break cycle of poverty

By ED RUNYAN

runyan@vindy.com

WARREN

Ernie Cook, chief deputy for the Trumbull County Sheriff’s Office, believes a $20,000 grant to pay for an electronic-monitoring program for county-jail inmates will help break the “cycle of poverty.”

Cook has asked the county commissioners to advertise for bids for the equipment to run the program. Commissioners are expected to approve the proposal today.

With the money received from the Ohio Office of Criminal Justice Services, Cook believes the sheriff’s office can purchase monitoring equipment for 20 offenders and five Blackberry hand-held devices to be used by probation officers to monitor the offender.

Cook said electronic monitoring is available now in Trumbull County, but the offender must pay for the monitoring — usually around $12 to $15 per day. Inmates who don’t have enough money to pay for such a program don’t have that option open to them, Cook said.

Electronic monitoring systems used in the county now are run by private companies. But if the sheriff’s department purchased its own equipment, it would have the option of charging a fee to the offender or offering the monitoring for free, Cook said.

In many cases, offenders are given work-release privileges so they don’t lose their job when they are convicted of a crime. In many instances, people are arrested because they fail to pay fines or court costs, Cook noted.

By being locked up, the offender gets further behind on payments, making financial problems worse, thereby extending the cycle of poverty, Cook said.

The program would be made available to judges in the county courts in Brookfield and Cortland first, though it also would be available to the municipal court judges in the county who have expressed an interest in the idea, Cook said.

The newest technology available in electronic monitoring equipment opens up exciting possibilities for monitoring offenders, Cook said.

For example, someone on probation for domestic violence could be fitted with a monitoring bracelet that would notify a probation officer if the offender traveled within a certain distance of the victim, Cook said.

Such devices can also uses an infrared sensor to monitor a person’s blood-alcohol and drug use on an ongoing basis and report to the probation officer if a person violates drug and alcohol prohibitions of their probation, he said.