GPS Monitoring Practices in Community Supervision and the ...

The author(s) shown below used Federal funds provided by the U.S. Department of Justice and prepared the following final report:

Document Title:

GPS Monitoring Practices in Community Supervision and the Potential Impact of Advanced Analytics, Version 1.0

Author(s):

Harold I. Heaton

Document No.:

249888

Date Received:

May 2016

Award Number:

2013-MU-CX-K111

This report has not been published by the U.S. Department of Justice. To provide better customer service, NCJRS has made this federally funded grant report available electronically.

Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect

the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

AOS-16-0088 January 2016 NIJ RT&E Center Project 13-7

GPS MONITORING PRACTICES IN COMMUNITY SUPERVISION AND THE POTENTIAL IMPACT OF ADVANCED ANALYTICS

Version 1.0

Prepared for: The National Institute of Justice

Harold I. Heaton

Prepared by: The National Criminal Justice Technology Research, Test, and Evaluation Center The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory 11100 Johns Hopkins Rd. Laurel, MD 20723-6099

Task No.:

FGSGJ

Contract No.:

2013-MU-CX-K111/115912

This project was supported by Award No. 2013-MU-CX-K111, awarded by the National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication/program/exhibition are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the Department of Justice.

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

CONTENTS

Page Figures............................................................................................................................................ iii Tables ............................................................................................................................................. iii 1. Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 1 2. GPS System Utilization in Offender Monitoring ................................................................... 2 3. Conceptual System Framework.............................................................................................. 5 4. State and Local Offender-Monitoring Practices ..................................................................... 7

4.1 High-Risk Use-Cases: Monitoring Sex and Gang Offenders in California ................ 10 4.2 Supervising Low-Risk Non-Violent Offenders .......................................................... 11 4.3 Facilitating Crime Scene Attribution .......................................................................... 12 5. Increasing the Efficiency of Offender Monitoring ............................................................... 13 5.1 TRACKS: A Prototype Geo-spatial Analytics Toolkit............................................... 14 5.2 Analytics Capabilities of Commercially-available Software...................................... 17 5.3 Current Role of Analytics in Community Monitoring Systems ................................. 19 6. Operational Impact of GPS Monitoring ............................................................................... 21 7. Cost Considerations.............................................................................................................. 23 8. Summary, Issues, and Recommendations ............................................................................ 24 8.1 Agency-identified Analytics Capability Needs .......................................................... 25 8.2 Enhanced Roles for Advanced Analytics in Corrections............................................ 26 9. References ............................................................................................................................ 28 Appendix A. Abbreviations and Acronyms............................................................................... A?1 Appendix B. Recommendations for Operational Testing of TRACKS......................................B?1

GPS Monitoring Practices in Community Supervision and the Potential Impact of Advanced Analytics

Version 1.0

January 2016

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Page ii

FIGURES Figure 3?1: Notional Offender Monitoring System .....................................................................5 Figure 5?1: Geo-Contextualizing the Space-Time Movements of Selected Offenders

Based on Automated Alerts from the Prototype TRACKS System ......................16

TABLES Table 2?1: Community Monitoring Populations for Selected Jurisdictions.................................4 Table 5?1: Analytic Capabilities of Commercially-available Offender Monitoring

Products..................................................................................................................18

GPS Monitoring Practices in Community Supervision and the Potential Impact of Advanced Analytics

Version 1.0

January 2016

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Page iii

1. INTRODUCTION

The first electronic monitoring (EM) devices were developed in the 1960s with the intent of providing feedback to young-adult-offender volunteers to facilitate their rehabilitation, but that approach was not widely accepted (Reference [1])1. Following their reemergence in the 1980s in support of a more punitive model of offender treatment, such devices were used principally for home detention applications. By 1990 radio-frequency (RF)2 technologies were in-use in all 50 states (Reference [2]).

The utility of EM increased considerably in 2000 when the military began permitting civilian Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers to attain much greater accuracy (Reference [3]), and the offender tracking market expanded quickly.3 At least 44,000 tracking devices were estimated to be in-use in the United States by 2009 (Reference [5]), and the more compact and affordable devices available today can be better tailored to specific needs. Modern features include voice communication, and audible and vibratory alerts to warn participants of schedule violations. These devices also include improved case management software and better mapping technology, with playback capabilities and mobile restriction zones that can be used to keep tracked participants from congregating and separated from former victims (Reference [6]).

Much of the exigency for enhanced usage of offender monitoring systems has resulted from legislative mandates to track sex offenders, but other applications have emerged such as intensively supervising high-risk parolees, developing confinement alternatives for low-risk criminals to facilitate their re-entry into society and alleviate jail overcrowding, or monitoring pre-trial defendants. "By 2010, 33 states had enacted legislation requiring that this technology be used on sex offenders," although many had not yet implemented those programs (Reference [6]). Some states and jurisdictions had also begun using EM to track gang members and domestic abusers, monitor habitual burglars, or alert former victims when offenders were released from custody (References [3] and [7]). Nevertheless, GPS-based systems generate a plethora of data. Without analytical aids to interpret those data, supervising agents can quickly become overwhelmed and unable to take advantage of these tools as they manage their daily caseloads.

The temporal sequences of locations gathered by GPS monitoring systems provide unprecedented opportunities to explore patterns of activity through the application of space-time analytics to individual movements and stops (Reference [8]). Automated processing and alerting

1 The authors of Reference [1] speculated that EM technology did not gain traction at that time because social acceptance was lacking for using positive reinforcement to change behavior, and because of an "Orwellian" fear of using electronic technology to remotely monitor individuals. They also noted that in the pre-digital era of the mid 1960's when this work occurred, EM represented such a substantial departure from then-existing correctional practices that it was difficult for most practitioners to conceptualize its use. 2 Definitions for all of the abbreviations and acronyms used in this document are presented in Appendix A. 3 Although the term "electronic monitoring" was traditionally associated with "curfew monitoring" of individuals confined to their homes (or other locations) by RF-based systems, it is also used today as a synonym for locationbased tracking with GPS technology. Some authors (e.g., Reference [4]) embed these terms within the broader category of electronic supervision, which encompasses a larger array of technologies that includes crime-scene correlation and remote alcohol monitoring.

GPS Monitoring Practices in Community Supervision and the Potential Impact of Advanced Analytics

Version 1.0

January 2016

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Page 1

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