In June 2024, a popular French Quarter tour guide was shot and killed in her car. Soon after, a teen already wearing an ankle monitor was arrested for the crime. In the wake of this shocking death, city and state leaders have placed New Orleans’ juvenile electronic monitoring program (EM) under intense public scrutiny. They want to know how a tragedy like this could have happened. They want to know why the program wasn’t being actively monitored. They also want to invest $2 million to reshape the city’s EM program into something entirely new.
Before city leaders start putting more tax dollars into electronic monitoring, we wish to explore what exactly the program is and what it’s designed to do. In this series of three articles, we will: explore EM’s benefits and limitations, examine the role Risk Assessment Instruments play in EM participation, and review EM’s current usage and controversy in New Orleans.
Part 1: the Benefits and Limitations of Electronic Monitoring Programs
Electronic monitoring (EM)—more commonly known as ankle monitoring—is a fairly regular form of punishment in the U.S. However, these programs are too often riddled with lax oversight, malfunctions, burdensome costs to users, and negative social stigma—all while having negligible impact on incarceration rates.
Believe it or not, EM was originally invented as a humane alternative to incarceration. Early programs monitored participants to provide positive reinforcement for rehabilitative behavior. Participants doing well were rewarded with free pizza or concert tickets. However, the best intentions of EM programs were morphed during the high crime era of the 1990s. Politicians and law enforcement officials, desperate for ways to ease overcrowded prisons, turned to ankle monitors as another means for spreading further state supervision and mass incarceration.
In the United States today, more than half a million people wear ankle monitors, many of whom haven’t yet been convicted of a crime. In some cases, individuals who were found innocent of their original charges still ended up behind bars due to EM program violations.
A lack of oversight and malfunctioning equipment have plagued ankle monitors since their invention. However, as more people are mandated to wear them, these issues have become more prevalent. Monitors have been known to display incorrect locations, send false positive alerts to police, extort their wearers, cause skin sores, and worsen preexisting health conditions. Worse, monitors actually electrocute 1 in 5 of their wearers. Unfortunately, electronic monitoring devices don’t have legal minimum standards for their function or maintenance, which can make them dangerous to both the users and their communities.
Electronic monitors are also associated with social stigma; it’s assumed that everyone wearing a monitor must be a criminal, therefore causing embarrassment and stress to the wearers. Social ostracization can even lead wearers to be fired from their jobs.
Monitors require constant attention to charging and ensuring a signal. They also beep constantly throughout the day and night, causing damage to wearers’ mental health.
Further, the daily costs of monitoring are often passed on to the wearer, causing financial strain for themselves and their households. In Louisiana, monitors come with an installation fee of $100. The program also costs defendants around $10 for each day that they are monitored—adding up to more than $300 per month. If the monitor malfunctions or if the user cannot pay, then they are often sent back to jail.
In one case, a man was incarcerated for 12 months for stealing a single beer from a gas station. This wasn’t due to the theft itself, but because he could not afford the daily fee for his own monitoring.
In another case, a man was released from prison so he could access cancer treatment that was not available for him while incarcerated. Every time that he was late paying his fees (while still undergoing treatment), the monitoring company threatened him with reincarceration, which would have posed disastrous consequences to his health and well-being.
Mounting evidence indicates that EM programs may not even work to meaningfully reduce the number of people incarcerated. In several studies, incarceration rates remained the same in cities where electronic monitoring rates have skyrocketed. The reason? EM is too frequently used in cases where the person could have otherwise been free of the legal system entirely and without posing any danger to the community.
It’s possible that EM programs could still evolve into a valuable tool for both the legal system and wearers if applied thoughtfully. A monitor program emphasizing positive reinforcement and used selectively for low-risk individuals could serve as a viable alternative to incarceration. However, as they are currently used, electronic monitoring programs are little more than another tool for punishment and driving people deeper into the legal system. Sadly, this undermines EM’s original goal of reducing incarceration rates in one of the most carceral countries in the world.
In Part 2 of this series, we will examine the role that Risk Assessment Instruments play in determining how people get put into electronic monitoring programs.
