On an Electronic Leash : Probation Officials Increasingly Rely on Ankle Bracelet to Monitor Youths

For Carlos, a 14-year-old gang member who has been running the streets of Orange County with his homeboys stealing and burglarizing cars for almost five years, life has slowed to a crawl since a bracelet with a radio transmitter was shackled to his ankle four weeks ago.

“I lay on my bed, sleep a lot and talk on the telephone. . . . My girlfriend is here just about every day,” said Carlos, not his real name. The bracelet he wears under his gray baggy pants was a gift from the county Probation Department. It allows him to serve his 45-day sentence away from the 700 beds in the county’s crowded youth correctional institutions.

“I have a lot of friends on the bracelet,” Carlos said. “We have not found a way to beat it.”

In Carlos’ bedroom is a black box wired to the telephone that connects to a central computer at the probation office. The hookup serves as a 24-hour electronic leash that stops 20 feet outside his front door. He wears the bracelet to school every day and even into the shower. Two weeks ago he triggered the system when he took out the trash. If the anklet is tampered with or cut off, the monitoring computer is alerted. “This is way better. You are in your house and sleep in your own bed,” said Carlos, who has spent much of the past year in Juvenile Hall. “I don’t like that place. And my mom feels better that I am always home.”

Several years ago, use of the ankle bracelet as an alternative to confinement was largely experimental, but today officials are relying on it to ease the overcrowding in Juvenile Hall caused by a dramatic increase in gang-related arrests.

Since 1987, there has been a 63% increase in youths arrested for committing violent crimes, according to a Probation Department study published in February. The same study identified more than 100 gangs in Orange County with an estimated membership of about 13,000.

To manage the crisis, authorities expanded Juvenile Hall by 30 beds in April and opened another 30 beds this weekend. Two years ago, they gave up jailing misdemeanor cases and expanded the early release and alternative confinement programs to many of the remaining felons and gang members.

During 1991, the population at Juvenile Hall--the main locked facility for youths--hovered at or above its capacity of 344. In addition, the Probation Department operates three low-security correctional camps with a total capacity of about 310 and has access to about 50 beds at the Central Men’s Jail.

As a result, the answer to handling the growth in youth crime--especially when it involves first-time offenders and teens less likely to flee--is the county’s various forms of alternative confinement.

The alternative confinement programs, which are staffed to handle about 145 cases, make up the rest of the county juvenile system. It works with a varying degree of success. Probation officials project that they will more than double the use of alternative confinement before the end of the decade.

Alternative confinement takes several forms. Minors can be sent home--with or without an ankle bracelet--to await trial or afterward as an early release from their sentence. The ankle bracelets are given to complement frequent random visits from probation officers.

“Our top priority is to relieve overcrowding in Juvenile Hall, and it is working quite well,” said Al Lindeman, director of the alternative confinement program at the Probation Department.

Lindeman said statistics compiled since July show that about 75% of youths awaiting trial on home supervision adhere to the conditions of confinement. About 15% violate the conditions or break the law and are taken back into custody. Another 10% flee.

“The fear of incarceration is what drives the success of this program,” said Pam Peterson, a deputy probation officer who handles Carlos’ case and a dozen others. “The kids know that if they are caught violating they will be locked up again . . . and that means they have to serve the sentence over again.” She added that a single minor violation will not usually win a youth a trip back to a locked cell, rather officials try to lock up the repeat offenders and serious violators.

Peterson said youths can leave their houses only with their probation officers’ permission. Consequently, the 15 youths in her caseload are constantly asking for permission to accompany their parents to the grocery store, a self-service laundry or the barber. Sometimes that allows them to stray or to break probation.

Though the bracelet alerts the Probation Department that a youth has strayed and will not pinpoint his location, it sometimes serves as a red flag for the police.

Lt. Robert Helton, Santa Ana police spokesman, said it is “not uncommon” for officers to spot youths with bracelets violating the conditions of the program by congregating with fellow gang members.

“We have a deputy probation officer with us when we are looking for congregations of gang members,” Helton said. “If we find kids with bracelets on, they will take them into custody right on the spot unless they can give the officer a real good reason why they are out.”

Other street officers also support the bracelet system.

Al Butler, a gang unit detective in Garden Grove, said: “As far as the ankle bracelet goes, kids are not outsmarting the system yet.”

That’s not always the case, as the Probation Department’s 25% failure rate shows.

Last June, Carlos deliberately violated probation while wearing the bracelet when he attempted to drive his girlfriend home one night and return before the Probation Department sent someone to his home the next morning.

When he was stopped by police, Carlos cut the bracelet off with a knife and hid it under the car seat. The police found the bracelet, but Carlos had given a fake name and was released. Before the police traced the bracelet to him, he had crossed the Mexican border.

“I came back two weeks later and turned myself in,” he said while sitting in an apartment with his mother and probation officer last week. “Every time I called home, my mom told me the police were always coming around looking for me. When I came back to my house, I was here 10 minutes before they came and got me.”

Carlos got no credit for the time he wore the bracelet and had to serve that 45-day sentence again in a youth camp. Subsequently, Carlos was arrested on yet another offense, and ultimately given another bracelet and 45 more days.

The terms of his probation--similar to those applied to nearly every other minor sent home with a bracelet--are that he must attend school each day, stay away from his friends in the gang, and return home as soon as school ends. His bracelet will be taken off Friday.

Carlos’ mother said she hopes that the house arrest, along with the added parental supervision, has changed her son.

“I am sick and tired of (his gang activity), and he has promised me he will change,” she said.

Carlos, who is too young to shave his chin or obtain a driver’s license, said that he is getting too old for street gangs.

“They just do the same thing every night,” he said. When the bracelet comes off, he will look for a job. “I think that will help me stay away from the gang.”

Juvenile Felony Count

The number of Orange County juveniles arrested for violent crimes has been steadily rising since 1987, though this year it has leveled off. The big jump in felony arrests, which began in the late 1980s, covers homicide, rape, robbery, assault and kidnaping. Between 1987 and 1990, the rate per 100,000 increased 60%.

Total Arrests violent per 100,000 Year crimes minors 1987 500 218.2 1988 548 241.4 1989 641 291.5 1990 823 349.6 1991 819 331.8

Source: California attorney general’s office Researched by BOB ELSTON / For The Times