Home Unpleasant During House Arrest, Judge Learns

No, Judge David Ryan told his wife, Martha, over the weekend, I can’t take the rental movie back to the video store. “Honey, I told you,” he said. “I’m under house arrest.”

Turn off that cordless phone, Ryan told his 16-year-old son, Travis. Cordless phones interfere with the house arrest ankle beeper, which stays silent when it’s within 150 feet of a monitor phone and instantly beeps to dial a computer when it’s not. “I told you,” Ryan said. “You can’t use the cordless phone when I’m under house arrest.”

A neighbor called out to Ryan while the judge was pulling weeds at the edge of his yard, asking if he wanted to come on over. “I can’t,” Ryan said he told the neighbor. “I’m under house arrest. I’ll, ah, explain it to you later.”

The explanation is simple. For the past week, Ryan has worn an electronic bracelet around his left ankle, to test for himself the ins and outs of house arrest.

Late Monday, he pronounced judgment. The program has promise, he said. It offers the county the chance to save money and jail space, both good things, since the county is financially strapped and its jails are chronically crowded.

Twice, he violated his house arrest, both times by being gone when he was supposed to be home, said officials with the company monitoring him, Electronic Supervision Services in La Mesa. Both times he was detected, office manager Susan Chance said.

“I would certainly use it again,” Ryan said--but only on a case-by-case basis. That’s because it also has drawbacks, he said.

The family pressure to violate the 150-foot radius can be intense, he said. Other candidates for the bracelet probably can relate to a spouse who frowns when the video store awaits or a teen-ager is distressed at the loss of a cordless phone, he said.

“What I can say at this point is that you do have to have a lot of family support to make it work,” Ryan said.

In sum, that is why Ryan, 48, volunteered for a week’s worth of self-imprisonment. “Going through an experience is always far more rewarding than telling me about it or, worse yet, giving me a book that purportedly explains it,” he said.

Perpetually curious about ways to improve the courts and the criminal justice system, Ryan has tried several other ideas to see for himself whether whether they work.

He has personally tested auto ignition devices that detect breath-alcohol limits and won’t allow a car to start if the driver’s alcohol intake is too high.

This year, while he is the presiding judge in Vista, the Municipal Court there is trying a system called “vertical case management” for misdemeanor criminal cases. Instead of shipping a case from judge to judge as it works its way through the system, the case stays with one judge. The theory is that the judge becomes intimately familiar with the case and can sweep it toward resolution faster than the traditional way.

So when ESS asked Ryan recently whether he wanted to test the ankle bracelet, he said, sure.

ESS, which is based in Torrance, has had its San Diego-area office for about two years, said office manager Susan Chance. It is a friendly competitor with the county Probation Department, which has offered a house arrest plan for about six years, said Tom Whitney, a probation officer in charge of house arrest programs.

Both programs are roughly the same. Each starts with the waterproof beeper, a square box about half the size of a cigarette package, which is attached to a plastic bracelet that fits around the ankle.

The band sends signals to a black box that hooks into a phone, said Greg Busby, the ESS court representative. The bracelet has wires in it, and, if it’s cut, the box senses the loss of signal and dials a computer, which can spit out a report for court or probation staff, he said.

If the band goes beyond 150 feet from the phone, it senses that, too, and the call immediately goes in to the computer, he said.

Both the county and ESS plans typically allow an offender to be away from the box--for a job--for certain hours each workday. If the box isn’t back by the appropriate time, the computer gets a call, Busby said.

Last Tuesday, on Ryan’s first day with the bracelet, after he had arranged a work schedule of 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m., he went to a judge’s meeting and didn’t get home until 9 p.m. Within minutes, he said, he got a call from the ESS monitors, asking where he had been. “So that’s how it works,” he said.

On Saturday, he went to a wedding when he was supposed to be home. Early Monday morning when he came to work, he found a faxed letter, addressed to him as presiding judge, saying that ESS client David Ryan had violated his house arrest.

The ESS plan costs about $12 a day, Busby said, all of it paid for by the offender. The county’s plan costs $10 to $15 a day, and the offender pays, Whitney said.

In contrast, it costs the county $47 a day to keep someone behind bars, Ryan said.

Both plans are offered to nonviolent offenders, usually to people convicted of drunk driving, petty theft, forgery and the like, Busby said.

It took only one day for the band to make him feel “claustrophobic,” Ryan said. “Then I wanted to kick it off.”