Whitey Ford
07-07-2019, 02:47 PM
Digital Jail: How Electronic Monitoring Drives Defendants Into Debt
Ankle bracelets are promoted as a humane alternative to jail. But private companies charge defendants hundreds of dollars a month to wear the surveillance devices. If people can’t pay, they may end up behind bars.
Long story short: Nigger pulled over in stolen car, claims 'friend' had 'lent' it to him, dindu nuffins. Sent to jail with rats, roaches and had to drink moldy water. Nigger released on $300 bail which was paid for by a 'non-profit' prisoner rights advocates group. Nigger has girlfriend seven months pregnant, mama lost her job. Now to stay free must pay for an ankle bracelet. Raycissss.
But, on the bright side, they are shifting the cost of ankle bracelet monitoring over the offender instead of the taxpayer. WIN.
The St. Louis area has made national headlines for its “offender funded” model of policing and punishment. Stricken by postindustrial decline and the 2008 financial crisis, its municipalities turned to their police departments and courts to make up for shortfalls in revenue. In 2015, the Ferguson Report by the United States Department of Justice put hard numbers to what black residents had long suspected: The police were targeting them with disproportionate arrests, traffic tickets and excessive fines.
EMASS may have saved the city some money, but it also created an extraordinary and arbitrary-seeming new expense for poor defendants. When cities cover the cost of monitoring, they often pay private contractors $2 to $3 a day for the same equipment and services for which EMASS charges defendants $10 a day. To come up with the money, EMASS clients told me, they had to find second jobs, take their children out of day care and cut into disability checks. Others hurried to plead guilty for no better reason than that being on probation was cheaper than paying for a monitor.
At the downtown office, White signed a contract stating that he would charge his monitor for an hour and a half each day and “report” to EMASS with $70 each week. He could shower, but was not to bathe or swim (the monitor is water-resistant, not waterproof). Interfering with the monitor’s functioning was a felony.
https://www.propublica.org/article/digital-jail-how-electronic-monitoring-drives-defendants-into-debt
Ankle bracelets are promoted as a humane alternative to jail. But private companies charge defendants hundreds of dollars a month to wear the surveillance devices. If people can’t pay, they may end up behind bars.
Long story short: Nigger pulled over in stolen car, claims 'friend' had 'lent' it to him, dindu nuffins. Sent to jail with rats, roaches and had to drink moldy water. Nigger released on $300 bail which was paid for by a 'non-profit' prisoner rights advocates group. Nigger has girlfriend seven months pregnant, mama lost her job. Now to stay free must pay for an ankle bracelet. Raycissss.
But, on the bright side, they are shifting the cost of ankle bracelet monitoring over the offender instead of the taxpayer. WIN.
The St. Louis area has made national headlines for its “offender funded” model of policing and punishment. Stricken by postindustrial decline and the 2008 financial crisis, its municipalities turned to their police departments and courts to make up for shortfalls in revenue. In 2015, the Ferguson Report by the United States Department of Justice put hard numbers to what black residents had long suspected: The police were targeting them with disproportionate arrests, traffic tickets and excessive fines.
EMASS may have saved the city some money, but it also created an extraordinary and arbitrary-seeming new expense for poor defendants. When cities cover the cost of monitoring, they often pay private contractors $2 to $3 a day for the same equipment and services for which EMASS charges defendants $10 a day. To come up with the money, EMASS clients told me, they had to find second jobs, take their children out of day care and cut into disability checks. Others hurried to plead guilty for no better reason than that being on probation was cheaper than paying for a monitor.
At the downtown office, White signed a contract stating that he would charge his monitor for an hour and a half each day and “report” to EMASS with $70 each week. He could shower, but was not to bathe or swim (the monitor is water-resistant, not waterproof). Interfering with the monitor’s functioning was a felony.
https://www.propublica.org/article/digital-jail-how-electronic-monitoring-drives-defendants-into-debt