Leverage technology to improve parole

By Fester:

As Jay pointed out, the American fetish of mass incaceration is very expensive and is being challenged by state and local budget crisis.  Aggressive monitoring and violation notification could significant reduce explicit costs and reduce the social costs of imprisonment while still providing for a high degree of public security or the perception thereof. 

there are two long running lawsuits that contend the problems with California prisons are a result of overcrowding and a federal court is chartered with deciding if the lawsuits are legitimate and, if so, what to do about it.  That federal judical panel will hear closing arguments today, and the impact of the decision could be far reaching.  Inmates attorneys argued yesterday the answer to the California prison problem is the release of 52,000 inmates.

Even with the release of the 50K inmates, the number left (110K) would still exceed California prison capacity by 10.000 prisoners.  And the state has warned an early release of over 50,000 inmates would overwhelm also nearly bankrupt local authorities responsible to monitor the ex-inmates. 

For example, in California, it's anticipated that in 5 years more money will be spent on incarcerating prisoners than educating students in public universities.  The FY2007 annual operating budget to maintain the California prison system is $10B.   A 2007 law authorized an additional $7.4B be spent to build 40,000 new prison beds.   Interest payments on state bonds sold to finance prison construction will amount to $330M/year by 2011

So what to do?

Why not leverage common technologies and existing schemas to institute parole-plus with extensive monitoring.  We already use electronic monitoring as part of bail agreements with some of the biggest alleged crooks in the world, why not use a version of it for the small time grifters, burglars and marijuana street dealers as well.

Bernard Madoff, the financier accused of one of the biggest frauds in Wall Street history, will be allowed to stay out on bail but placed under electronic monitoring and home detention, a U.S. judge ordered on Wednesday....

The new conditions also include a curfew of 7 p.m. through 9 a.m. The electronic monitoring was to be installed as soon as possible, according to court documents.

A recent Scottish evaluation of electronic bail monitoring which would be very similar to electornic parole monitoring showed that monitoring was significantly cheaper than incaceration, even when accounting for the imprisonment of violators.  Under one decision tree, releasing an individual into the community with monitoring was an order of magnitude less expensive than incaceration.  That is a significant savings. 

Electronic and geographic monitoring is cost effective, reliable and already in place. 

Why not expand the system so that individuals on parole for non-violent crimes get an ankle bracelet with a GPS transceiver that updates a central database every minute?  The parole officer only gets pinged when an individual is in violation of their parole such as entering a bar or staying out of the house past a pre-established curfew.  This allows the PO to focus on the more intense cases while still monitoring the routine cases instead of scrambling to cover every case and letting several fall through the cracks.  This technology should also serve as a crime deterrant as it would be fairly obvious that a monitored individual was at the Quikkie Mart at precisely the time it was robbed. 

Civilian side technology is already there.  For instance, Google is introducing a new service that basically does this without the secured GPS device integration:

Using a combination of Global Positioning System, WiFi, and cell tower location data, the service, an extension of Google Maps, Latitude can determine where you are in the world via your mobile device depending on which of those technologies the device can use. It will work on most color Blackberries, most Windows Mobile 5.0 devices, most Symbian S60 devices, and phones powered by Google’s Android mobile software, such as the T-Mobile G1. No iPhone or iPod Touch yet, but Google says that’s coming very soon.

The service wasn’t yet functional when I was briefed by Google, so I can’t yet vouch for it, but here’s how it works: You download a new version of Google Maps onto your mobile device, then invite friends via an email to join. Once they accept, and if they have a Google account with a profile picture, you’ll see that on a map.

There is a bit of technology development and integration that would need to take place, but the basic building blocks of effective violation monitoring is in place for people on parole.  It would save local and state governments money, reduce the social disruption of incaceration, reduce recidivism as high probablity of punishment is a good deterrant and reduce criminal training and competency as there will be far fewer people in prison. 

PS:  I stole the vast majority of the thought process from Mark Kleiman but I can not find the posts that I remember. 

PPS:  Because it was not in a post, but in a couple of articles --- this one focuses on immediate, predictable but small punishments instead of delayed, random and large punishments:

Compared with the three months before being put in the program, HOPE probationers reduced no-show and positive test result rates by more than 90%, and their behavior improved over time. In contrast, violation rates for the non-HOPE sample grew steadily worse over time, with 37% eventually having their probation revoked, compared with fewer than 5% of the HOPE group. The HOPE pilot program has now been expanded to more than 1,000 probationers, about one-eighth of all felony probationers on Oahu, and to the calendars of all 10 felony judges. So far, the results of the expanded program match the results of the pilot.