Hooked to Controversy : Surveillance Cuffs Are Praised as Alternative to Jail--and Derided as Useless

Orange County socialite Danny Hernandez wore one. So did Saudi financier Adnan Khashoggi. Others who have sported the device include a former publicist for Marla Maples Trump, plus thousands of lesser-known criminal defendants across the country: petty thieves, drunk drivers, wife beaters, juvenile delinquents.

Electronic surveillance anklets are a controversial tool praised as a cheap alternative to incarceration for low-risk offenders, but they are criticized by some people as being too lenient and have been shown in a major federal study to be useless at deterring crime.

A former Fountain Valley police officer who was fitted with an electronic cuff after pleading guilty to embezzlement was slain last year in a confrontation with FBI agents who labeled him a serial bank robber. A Los Angeles County man wearing the device fled his home in Harbor City and shot his estranged wife to death five years ago. And a Berkeley parolee who was forced to wear an anklet has been accused of robbing and killing an Oakland woman in December. Other cities around the country have witnessed scattered cases in which suspects were charged with sometimes violent crimes while wearing the ankle bracelets.

But those headline-making failures are unusual exceptions for the system, which typically operates through a receiver attached to a phone line in the offender’s home. When the person wearing the cuff strays more than 150 feet from home, the device sends an alert to the monitoring agency.

“It’s an absolutely wonderful procedure. It saves us as taxpayers tens and tens of thousands of dollars. And it’s a punishment,” said defense lawyer John W. Barton, who has represented at least 25 clients who have been ordered confined at home instead of being sentenced to jail.

The ankle bracelets find plenty of support among defense lawyers, probation officers and some judges. They say the device is used as a condition of probation only for people thought unlikely to pose a danger at home--such as first-time drunk drivers with jobs and shoplifters who have children to tend.

Letting a carefully chosen low-risk offender go home hooked to a cuff can also allow them to seek help, such as counseling for anger management or substance abuse, supporters say.

“I think it’s a good alternative to jail when it’s properly utilized,” said Downey Municipal Judge Roy Paul, who has approved the use of the monitoring anklet more than 20 times since the program began in 1992. “Every second, [inmates] are accounted for,” he said.

Rebecca Mead, an investigator for the program, said offenders with a drunk driving conviction could keep their jobs and seek treatment that is not available in jail while being subject to breath-alcohol tests at home.

“They don’t drink while they’re on the program, and they’re able to go to Alcoholics Anonymous,” she said. “Frequently, they modify their behavior.”

“They can be very satisfactory,” said Orange County Central Municipal Judge Gregory H. Lewis, who has approved the use of the monitoring anklets a handful of times in eight years on the bench. “You’re talking about expanding control over a defendant in a probationary process.”

Bob, a 51-year-old consultant who lives in Riverside County but was convicted in Los Angeles County of failing to pay child support, will finish two concurrent one-year sentences of home confinement this month.

He doesn’t want his full name published because he has managed to keep his conviction a secret from almost everyone except his wife. He said his young children have not noticed the transmitter that he describes as an “overgrown watch,” strapped by a black band to his ankle, because his clothing hides it.

Bob called the monitoring program “terrific” because it has allowed him to continue his home business to support his large family, spend time with them and preserve his anonymity.

But he doesn’t forget that he is an inmate in county custody. He says he has been supporting his children and is appealing his conviction. “You’re tethered to a stake almost like a dog would be,” he said, adding that his family is restricted from having social gatherings in the house.

Still, he said, “I can go into the backyard and play ball with the kids.”

Jim Eslinger, a 47-year-old Anaheim janitor, is two months into home confinement for a drug offense earlier this year. The judge agreed to let him serve the one-year jail sentence at home so that Eslinger can help his epileptic wife and care for her ailing mother, who lives next door.

“I just needed him here,” said Eslinger’s wife, Florence.

Eslinger said it is hard to keep up with the $15 daily cost of the ankle device. And the strap-on transmitter, roughly the size and shape of a computer mouse, sometimes makes it uncomfortable for sleeping. But he said the arrangement has allowed him to keep a job and drive his mother-in-law for regular visits to her doctor. Those outings are approved in advance and monitored by Sentencing Concepts, an Anaheim firm.

“It gets old sitting around here with nothing to do. I can go outside and play with the dog, I guess,” Eslinger said.

Dave Davies, who runs the monitoring program for sentenced adults for Los Angeles County’s probation department, said about 700 adults are being monitored in Los Angeles County with the ankle cuffs. About 7% have violated the conditions and were remanded into custody; the remaining 3% have fled. But for 90% of those who have worn them, the ankle bracelets have worked, he said.

After the case in which the Harbor City man killed his estranged wife, Davies said, the county tightened up on its program. That man cut his cuff and placed it next to the receiver to appear as if he were still in the house, Davies said. In addition, phone calls to check on his whereabouts were not made.

Since 1992, the county has used sensors that notice a temperature change if the ankle bracelet is not worn next to the skin, he said. And the county probation department directly supervises the private companies that monitor those wearing cuffs. The county has had no similar incidents using the new programs, Davies said.

In Los Angeles County, a sliding scale determines how much defendants pay for the monitoring program. Roughly, they pay a daily amount equal to their hourly wage; the standard rate is about $15 a day, Davies said.

Nationwide, 18,687 defendants and offenders were tracked last year with an electronic tether, according to a survey by the Criminal Justice Institute in South Salem, N.Y.

But detractors say home confinement amounts to no punishment at all. Some judges refuse to use the device, and one key study casts doubt on whether it is the anklet that keeps people at home.

A review sponsored by U.S. Department of Justice on the effectiveness of the devices concluded that they do not save money, free jail beds or deter crime. The three-year survey of the monitoring system’s use in Oklahoma concluded in 1990 that the devices were useful only for a narrow segment of defendants and prisoners and, even in those cases, had no meaningful impact.

Defendants wearing the tracking cuffs were no more likely to appear for court than other offenders, the study showed, nor did the device seem to affect recidivism rates.

“But the judges like it,” said study author James Austin, vice president of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency in Washington. “It has important symbolic value.”

The cuffs don’t save money because the people wearing them would probably otherwise be released, Austin said, because they are the least dangerous of convicts.

No one says that electronic monitoring should be used for dangerous offenders.

“If there is a fear that a defendant would commit additional crimes,” Davies said, “that is not the kind of defendant” that should be placed on electronic monitoring.

Even those who favor use of the devices acknowledge the limitations. To be effective, home confinement should be coupled with counseling or other help, and is never the right prescription for dangerous offenders, said Daniel Verwiel, chief executive officer at Sentencing Concepts, one of three firms negotiating with Orange County to monitor offenders electronically.

“No one should convince themselves that electronic monitoring is a panacea. It’s not,” Verwiel said. “If you put a violent criminal on electronic monitoring, it’s a big mistake.”

Court systems vary in their use of the ankle bracelets. In Orange County’s state courts, monitored house arrest is most often used as an alternative to jail. Some judges have used the cuffs to keep spousal-abuse defendants away from victims. Currently, about 50 juvenile defendants with the ankle bracelets can attend school while awaiting court hearings, said Deputy Probation Officer Chuck Sisco.

“They’ve gotten used to going where they want, when they want,” Sisco said. “Now they have to stay home. They have to listen to their parents.”

State parole officials have demanded that some high-profile convicts wear the ankle bracelets upon release. Gov. Pete Wilson ordered paroled serial rapist Melvin Carter to be outfitted with a monitoring device last year. And Charles Rothenberg, imprisoned after setting his son on fire in a Buena Park motel, had to wear one after his 1990 release.

The ankle bracelets also have found their place in the jet set.

Hernandez, an Orange County socialite, was at home with an electronic device after his 1993 conviction in connection with the disappearance of $8 million from a precious metals firm. But he later was sent to prison to await sentencing when he fell $440 behind in payments for the cost of the system.

Khashoggi, the Saudi financier, had to wear a bracelet as a condition of bail after being charged with helping former Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos in a real estate fraud. Chuck Jones, once a spokesman for Marla Maples Trump, was monitored electronically after he was convicted of stealing shoes and underwear from her home.

But most times, those detained at home are anything but the well-heeled.

The $12 to $16 daily fee for the device spelled the downfall for a Ventura County home-arrest pilot program in 1994 because many convicts opted to stay in jail instead of paying. And in Cook County, Ill., home of the largest electronic monitoring home arrest program, the cuffs are used exclusively for people who cannot pay bail.

On any given day or night, half a dozen computer technicians at the Cook County Sheriff’s Office headquarters are monitoring the location of more than 1,500 defendants, said Bill Cunningham, spokesman for the Cook County Sheriff’s Office.

But the Chicago area also has seen some of the highest profile failures of the electronic monitoring system.

A Chicago firefighter who was the brother of Philadelphia 76ers star Maurice Cheeks was killed in 1991 by a gang that included a convict wearing his leg monitor. An 11-year-old baby-sitter in suburban Lake County was killed after a convicted burglar removed his ankle bracelet. Two other murders have allegedly been committed since 1990 by Chicago-area convicts who were supposed to be at home.

Cunningham said those lapses were rare, if tragic, breakdowns. “It’s not foolproof--nothing is--but it works for us,” he said.