“Public safety decisions are only as good as the information behind them,” Jill Dennis, Director & Owner of the Assured Supervision Accountability Program, explained on my show.
And currently, as far as ankle monitor procedure goes, the City of New Orleans is relying on deeply disjointed information.
Not many people understand the ankle monitor process, but square one is putting information into the Offender Management System (OMS). This storage system contains info about criminal offenders, in this case, those who have been issued an ankle monitor. Once it's in, law enforcement and courts can access this system to review cases or check for violations.
But there’s a big problem: Not all ankle monitor providers are registered with OMS. Furthermore, much of the information that goes into the OMS is delayed, incomplete, or inconsistent—leaving courts to make decisions purely based on guesswork.
Dennis claims the current system actively impedes law enforcement.
“Right now, we’re in the middle of a few active investigations where law enforcement has spent weeks, sometimes months, trying to identify or locate the provider or the offender that is being investigated, even though they are on an ankle monitor. And we believe public safety can’t depend on whether a provider is actually acting in OMS,” Dennis says.
“I probably get 10 to 12 calls a week saying, Hey, I'm not pulling anything about this guy. I know he's a suspect. I know that he's wearing an ankle monitor, but when I put him in OMS, he's not there,” Dennis continues.
Typically, this is because a specific provider isn’t registered in OMS. And in the worst cases, it means criminals are out in public, in stark violation of the conditions of their house arrest.
Ideally, the OMS system is meant to close these information gaps.
Dennis explains, “What it does is standardize how all supervision activity is documented, what’s reviewed by the court, by law enforcement, by anybody investigating a provider who may not be reporting as they should.”
By accessing this information, “courts and law enforcement can immediately see whose responsible,” Dennis says. “All investigations are based on fact. The accountability in this becomes transparent, and public safety is not left to guesswork.”
But even with registered providers, as things stand, Dennis says there’s commonly a 3-7 day delay before ankle monitor info is even scanned into the OMS, a window that the criminal clerk’s office is working to reduce.
Dennis explains that as a solution, “We’ve even suggested that these orders be scanned in by the clerk inside the courthouse. That allows these conditions to be visible before the paperwork gets handed to the sheriff’s office.”
However, the issues run even deeper than the lack of requirements for providers to enter the OMS. Dennis reveals that ankle monitor providers don’t require licensing to begin with. And while every jurisdiction is supposed to have a list of certified providers, there’s extremely little information about provider backgrounds and credentials.
“This (legislative) session, we're actually going to work on getting licensing statewide for providers, and that licensing will allow the state to know who the providers are and make sure they're not convicted felons,” Dennis says. “The state police will be able to investigate these providers just by walking in and saying, show me where your file cabinet is. None of that is available right now. You could be a convicted felon that has no experience at all, no training at all, no classes, no nothing, and become a GPS provider.”
While a more robust ankle monitoring process is an absolute necessity in New Orleans, Dennis explains that this is a statewide concern, and she hopes to see the Moreno administration lead the way in adopting more effective policies and laws.
“The current clerk has been very active in communicating with us,” Dennis explains. “A lot of that transparency when it comes to the jail, the DA's office, and other criminal justice stakeholders has been fixed. It’s not perfect yet, but they’re actively working on that system.”