Power Outages Make It Tricky To Track Those On House Arrest

The Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office monitors roughly 125 people under house arrest through global positioning satellite (GPS), but when the power goes, so does the signal to the little receiver boxes charging in offenders’ homes, allowing offenders to roam at will.

The Florida Department of Corrections monitors 226 people under a community control program, many through GPS. Corrections representative Debbie Buchanan said that probation officers were on hand throughout the recent hurricanes to verify that those in the program were exactly where they should be immediately after the storms were over.
Abstracted by the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center(NLECTC) from the Palm Beach Post (09/09/04) P. 11C; Spencer-Wendel, Susan.