Editorial
Front Page - Friday, April 30, 2010
Legal system telling alcohol offenders to SCRAM
David Laprad
Hugh Reece, program coordinator for Progressive Sentencing, Inc., displays three devices that monitor the activities of criminals, including the latest version of the SCRAM bracelet (middle device). Short for Secure Continuous Remote Alcohol Monitor, SCRAM bracelets continuously monitor offenders for alcohol
- David Laprad
Lindsay Lohan wore one. So did Paris Hilton. Even Robert Downey Jr. slipped one on for a while. It’s called SCRAM, and while a few celebrities have been seen wearing one, it’s not the latest in Hollywood bling. Short for Secure Continuous Remote Alcohol Monitor, SCRAM is an ankle bracelet that continuously monitors offenders for alcohol consumption.
About a dozen people in Hamilton County are wearing them right now, says Hugh Reece, program coordinator for Progressive Sentencing, Inc., which provides the bracelets. In each of those cases, the district attorney, judge and defense lawyer agreed to include SCRAM in the defendant’s plea package.
“As part of his argument, a defense attorney will claim his client never acts up until he has a drink,” Reece says. “So for a lot of offenders, it’s a way to avoid jail.”
While a SCRAM bracelet affords an offender more freedom than the walls of a prison cell, it’s just as effective at what it’s designed to do. Weighing a mere two ounces, the bracelets monitor the alcohol coming out of the pores of an individual. The data is then automatically uploaded to a modem in the offender’s home and sent to a monitoring service in Littleton, Colo.
As long as there are no ticks in the data, thing are cool, Reece says. But if the record reveals that the user has been drinking, the monitoring service lets him know.
“When I get a positive reading, I notify the court or the individual’s probation officer,” Reece says. “But I have the best compliance record in the state because I don’t use the bracelets as punishment; I use them as a means of working with an individual to get him over a hurdle.”
Reece says people begin drinking for a variety of reasons, and while the SCRAM program is part of the punishment an offender receives, it can also be part of the cure. “You may have broken the law, but you’re still an individual with issues to get around, so I’ll work with you any way you want.
“I had a couple of businessmen who picked up charges when the economy started crashing. One of them said he turned to the bottle when his financial situation started destroying his family. So we dealt with that over the course of a year. I never had a problem with him because when he started focusing on his kids, things turned around for him.”
Reece will call his clients to make sure they’re attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, play big brother with his younger customers and even let parents know how their college age kids are doing on the program. He says he tries to make the process personal since his father was an alcoholic, and he saw at a young age what drinking can do to a person and a family.
“I can talk with these young people about where they are because I went through the same thing,” he says.
Lending an understanding ear doesn’t mean Reece goes
easy on his clients. He says one of his customers was so nervous about getting a bad reading, the guy called him to make sure the wine in the vinaigrette dressing on his salad wasn’t going to cause a problem.
Reece points out that SCRAM bracelets are one part of a comprehensive solution. While the units allow offenders to maintain family obligations, hold jobs and contribute positively to their community, many of his clients also receive counseling at CADAS (Council for Drug & Alcohol Abuse Serv-ices) and spend weekends at Silverdale Workhouse in East Brainerd.
As part of their plea agreement, they also have to pay for the use of the bracelet. The cost is $240 a month, which covers the equipment and the monitoring fees. “That might be a car note for one person or rent for another, but when you take back what that individual was spending on liquor, it balances out,” Reece says.
SCRAM bracelets also work out well for the county, Reece says. To begin with, they offer cost-effective, automated testing, which lightens the workload of parole officers and lets courts and probation focus their attention on the offenders who need it the most. Not only that, but SCRAM bracelets offer a low cost per test, Reece says, and are cheaper than incarceration or home arrest. In addition, they require no labor after installation or appointments to administer tests.
Reece says SCRAM brace-lets are also more effective than manual monitoring methods because they provide 24-hour coverage, which gives a probation officer a complete profile of an offender’s activities rather than a snapshot. “An offender knows he’s going to have to do a Breathalyzer test when he has an appointment with his probation officer, so he knows when to cut off his drinking,” Reece says. “The bracelet tracks individuals 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”
Nonstop monitoring holds offenders continuously accountable for their actions, which keeps them honest, Reece says. This helps to protect the community in which they live and promotes safer roads.
Reece also says SCRAM bracelets incorporate 70 years of research and 22 per-reviewed studies, giving them a high degree of accuracy and reliability. Indeed, judges in 46 states have enough confidence in the units to rule as admissible in evidentiary hearings the data they collect.
For Reece, however, the most important upshot of the SCRAM program is that it helps to turn lives around. “My goal is to get people back on the right track,” he says. “If they’re willing to do that, then I’ll walk with them step by step through their issues. Then, hopefully, they’ll move on to a good and fulfilling life.”
Want to know more? Visit www.alcoholmonitoring.com and www.psiprobation.com.
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