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Advanced electronically monitored house arrest now uses GPS
YOUNGSTOWN
The technology of electronically monitored house arrest has advanced in recent years to the point where it can detect in real time, using a global positioning system, the precise location of someone under arrest.
“We will see, minute-by-minute, through our mapping program, through the electronic database, exactly where an offender is every single minute, and it’s accurate (to within) plus or minus 5 feet,” said David Stillwagon, chief executive officer of the Community Corrections Association Inc. on the city’s South Side.
The agency uses such equipment to strictly and accurately monitor about 50 people under court orders, including pretrial defendants on bond in criminal cases and defendants who are under electronically monitored house arrest, or EMHA, as part of their probation sentences.
The agency uses advanced global positioning and cellular phone tower-based technology, which updates participant location every minute; it no longer uses the older land line-based technology, Stillwagon said.
The issue of EMHA and its reliability re-emerged last week because prosecutors said capital murder suspect Robert Seman, who leaped 43 feet to his death on the Mahoning County Courthouse rotunda floor on Monday, broke his pre-trial house arrest in a rape case to set the fire that killed three people on Powers Way.
Seman appeared on drugstore security video on the day of the fire, even though the monitoring equipment said he was then at home, prosecutors said.
Seman was never monitored by CCA, Stillwagon said.
Prosecutors said Seman was being monitored by the Braking Point Recovery Center in Austintown, whose officials did not respond to a request for a Vindicator interview.
The advantages of EMHA are that arrestees pay for the monitoring service, don’t occupy jail space and don’t put demands on jail food and medical services at taxpayer expense, observed Maj. William Cappabianca of the county sheriff’s office.
CCA charges its house arrestees $8 a day and monitors them in real time via computer, sharing the monitoring information with the Ohio Adult Parole Authority and the Mahoning Valley Drug Task Force.
CCA installs durable ankle bracelet monitors, which will display evidence of tampering, Stillwagon said.
The devices are to be charged for two hours each day and are “waterproof in the shower,” said Jack Stephens, CCA’s house arrest officer. When the device is being charged, it remains on the arrestee, who is seated near an outlet.
If someone on EMHA violates house arrest terms, CCA immediately notifies the referring judge, who can revoke the bond and jail the program participant, Stillwagon said.
“They have to go through their lawyer and petition the court,” for permission to leave home for work or to attend religious services while under EMHA, Stephens said.
“I don’t deny them medical (departures from home), as long as they show proof that they are going there prior to going,” Stephens said.
When they return home, “They have to bring proof back saying that they were there” at the site of the medical care, Stephens added.