Clark this winter asked the Legislature for permission to begin the program and lawmakers set aside $200,000 from the Department of Corrections’ budget to pay for it. He updated a joint panel of legislators on his progress Tuesday.
The program will begin by the end of this week with pretrial detainees, people who have been arrested and are awaiting adjudication.
The goal of the program is to free up prison beds by allowing people who are awaiting trial to live in the community with the supervision of an electronic bracelet that monitors their location.
The program is also likely to save money and reduce recidivism, according to the legislative Joint Fiscal Office. It will, hopefully, allow people to keep their jobs and continue to pay child support, legislators said.
There were 376 people on detention housed in Department of Corrections’ facilities in August, according to a recent report, out of about 2,000 prisoners total.
Included in the cost of the pilot is about $50,000 for the Center for Justice Research at Norwich University to collect data about the program and measure effectiveness so it could be replicated elsewhere in the state.
“Bottom line is we’re ready to go,” Clark said.
The two-year pilot officially began July 1. Clark hired Dawn Hubbard, the former director of safety and security at Landmark College, to run it, he said. The sheriff has rented the tracking devices from 3M, a company also used by the Massachusetts’ corrections department.
Clark’s office has developed policies and procedures, including what dispatchers should do when they are alerted that someone has violated their conditions of release, by going outside the allowed area, for example.
A person can violate the conditions of the monitor four ways, Clark said. He or she can go outside the permitted zone, go into a forbidden zone, try to tamper with the device or commit a new offense, he said.
Before a person is assigned to the program, a judge will set a bail amount and if the person violates the conditions of release, he will go back to court, Clark said.
The zone around a person can be as small as 150 feet or as large as Windham County itself, he said. In addition to the bracelets, deputies will still check in with detainees to see if they are where they should be, he said.
The county will rent the monitors rather than purchase them and that way will get the most up-to-date technology, he said. For example, a new model will be released soon that includes a metal detector, because some people try to disable devices by covering them in aluminum foil, he said.
Clark said the local state’s attorney, public defenders, police and judges support the program. Judges have said they will begin to utilize the option slowly, Clark said.
“I don’t want to have the floodgates open,” he said.
At first the program will only be used for pretrial detainees, then later it can be used for people who have been sentenced and later the sheriff’s office can offer the monitoring services to the Department of Corrections, he said.
The corrections department already has authority to electronically monitor inmates though has had trouble using the program, in part because of a lack of cellphone coverage. The corrections department in August had 4 people on home detention, according to a recent report.
Clark said he personally tested the devices, which need only a GPS signal and work even in areas with no cell service.
