Welcome to Tech Talk. Bye. CT.

I looked at the use of GPS tracking bracelets on young people going through the juvenile justice system in California. And the reason I conducted the study was in 2015, I got approached by a group of juvenile defenders working in Alameda County, which is the county where Oakland and UC Berkeley where I teach, are located, and they were very frustrated with how GPS, tracking bracelets were impacting their clients. They felt like the technology was a poor fit for many of the young people who were on it, that it required them to follow really burdensome rules, that were just beyond what a typical teenager was capable of. And they also thought that a lot of the young people who were ending up on electronic monitoring weren't young people who would otherwise have been incarcerated. They were actually young people who would otherwise have been let out on probation and now also had to follow these burdensome electronic monitoring rules, which they felt demonstrated that it was not being used as an alternative to incarceration and therefore wasn't serving the purpose that, it was created,

Exactly. It was making things harder for young people to comply with the terms of probation and get off and resume their, normal lives. And that's actually really important because, the it turns out the criminologists have studied the juvenile system extensively, and it turns out that the most effective means of preventing young people from committing crime is to simply grow up. Right? Yeah. So criminal activity tends to yeah, no, exactly. Criminal activity tends to peak at around 16 as people, get older into their twenties. The vast majority of people who commit a crime as a teenager never commit one again. And the best thing to do, although it can be difficult, is simply to let them mature and make some mistakes. And by putting young people on GPS bracelets, which again have terms we can talk about which make which are just difficult for teenagers to comply with, that increases the risk that they'll actually violate these terms and be sent back into custody. And, putting young people in a custodial setting, like a juvenile home, has actually shown to increase rather than decrease their rates of recidivism. So I I was really interested in this because I think it's one example of how a technology like GPS tracking bracelet can enter into the justice system, and and and be, introduced for really positive purposes and yet have these, have these, potentially negative effects. And so often when we talk about surveillance technologies, people think of the harm as really abstract. Right? Like, big brother is watching you. What does that mean? But here, we're talking about kids in the juvenile system who we're all rooting for, and I feel like it ought to be the type of compelling, privacy issue that we can all sort of get behind and recognize the importance of. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, tell us a little bit about those

Yeah. So, so as part of my study, I looked at how electronic monitoring technology is being deployed across California. Juvenile probation departments operate at the county level, and 53 of 50 California's 58 counties use, electronic monitoring Oh, wow. On kids. So it's a really widespread technology. And one of the, things I was interested in, was just gathering some basic data. So for example, I, uncovered that about 10,000 unique young people a year on GPS tracking places in the juvenile system in California, and there just hadn't been any data about how common the technology was previously. But one of the questions I really wanted to ask is what difference does the technology make? So GPS angle ankle bracelets today are, are are GPS Okay. Enabled, which means that they, just use the GPS network that we're all familiar with to track where people go. That replaced an older technology, called radio frequency monitoring, which involved having to put a base station in a young person's home, and the ankle bracelet communicated with the base station and could only notify the probation officer if the young person left home. So That's right. GPS could track kids everywhere. The ankle bracelets they replaced could only track kids in a certain radius of their home. And so one of the questions I wanted to ask is what difference does technology make, because with the old technology, young people basically if they were on the technology, they were basically under house arrest. Right. They were not allowed

Right. Right. But, but but now that there's GPS, you don't actually have to put kids who are out under house arrest. If you wanna track them, you can let them go a broader array of places. But it turns out that most counties just have continued to use their old house arrest rules. Right? So instead of, for example, using a GPS bracelet and just saying you can't go by the victim's house. Right? We will know if you were there. You can go anywhere else, but you can't go there. They they just haven't updated their rules. They still lock people down in house arrest. And and we're talking about a kid on house arrest. Right? Oh my goodness. First of all, it's difficult for anyone to function on house arrest. But, for a young person, many of the young people who are involved in the juvenile system don't come from, the most advantageous circumstances. It's, you know, pretty common, for example, for kids to be living, you know, with many, many people in a small apartment. Often these young people don't have great relationships with their parents to begin with. They're parents themselves, and they have, difficulties in their lives and putting the kid in the house means they can't actually, distance themselves from emotionally volatile situations. So, and house arrest rules are just hard to follow. Right? So for example, you have to stay home unless you're going, to school or to a medical appointment. You have to keep the device charged, which, of course, makes sense. But, to charge the device, you typically have to be, plugged in. You have to basically sit or stand by an electrical outlet for a couple of hours a day. Sometimes counties even specify which hours it has to be. So if we're gonna go from from 7PM to 9PM. Oh my goodness. And, you know, all of these things, you know, because there's how to think about them, because, you know, sure. Right? They're they're they're maybe better, from being in custody, but they're not better if young people then violate, the terms of probation because they can't comply with these things and then end up cycling in and out of custody. And that's a pretty common story. So when I talk to juvenile offenders, they've had clients who will be out on electronic monitoring for a few weeks, will violate the terms, will go back into custody for a few days, will be out again, will violate again, and then be back in custody. And it's it's the the one of the challenges with this is that every time the young person is settling back into their life, for example, getting connected with a therapist or reestablishing a routine of attending school, they should end up back in custody, which disrupts the whole thing. Right. So, I think this is just an interesting example of a technology, you know, which sounds good in theory, right, but it ends up having a lot of sort of practical, challenges.

Yeah. You know, I wish I wish there were more data than there is. Unfortunately, juvenile provision departments, are not sort of set up to be research entities, and so they actually just don't keep a lot of data. But I was able to gather some through public records after class. So, as I mentioned earlier, I learned that about 10,000 young people were on electronic monitoring in California in 2017. I mean, I thought that set up an interesting, contrast to the number of people in custody. So that year, there were about 7,300 instances of young people being placed, in secure county or state facilities. And so to think that electronic laddering is an alternative to custody, you have to actually believe that California's rate of consignment would double if the technology disappears. And and no one I talked to thought that that was realistic, suggesting that this is actually just being used as a supplement, for many kids who are on probation. And then I you know, to try to back that up, I talked, to juvenile dissenters around the state because they have to actually decide in a particular case, you know, is this kid likely to go into custody? In which case, maybe I should argue that please just put them on GPS. Or is this kid likely to be out? In which case, I might wanna argue that GPS isn't necessary. Right. And most of them believed that the majority of kids who are on, who are on electronic monitoring would have been out regardless. Not everyone. They did think in some circumstances it made a difference and some kids, got released because of it. But then a lot of kids who are on it would otherwise have been would otherwise have been out. And so one of the things I'd really like to see is, for us to try to do more thinking about this technology and what it should be used now, because because I don't think tracking technology is going to become less intrusive. Right? It's just gonna become more intrusive over time as we gain more ways to,

Yeah. So, one thing that I think is important is that when, juvenile probation departments or counties want to use GPS tracking on kids, I think it's important that the counties have to bear the cost of that. Right now, in many parts of the country, actually not in California anymore, because of a recent legal change, young people's families are required to pay the cost of tracking. Oh my goodness.

Well, it can range for you from $3 a day to $15 a day. I mean, how much again, we're generally talking about low income people who don't have a lot of extra cash. Right? So your kid is in trouble, and the only way you know, you basically have to, agree to pay this money or else your Wow. Your young person may be in custody. So California actually banned imposing fees in the juvenile court system a couple of years ago, which is a really positive development. But in addition to burdening families, it makes the use of GPS tracking bracelets free for probation officers. Right? Oh, that's a good point. Department. And that that, in my view, incentivizes overuse because if it's free, then the attitude is why not use this technology. Right. But if instead, counties have to pay the monitoring companies for the technology, then they will be incentivized to use it, we hope, only in cases where the alternative they would have imposed is more expensive. Specifically, that would be holding someone in custody. I also think that, counties need to do a better job of, thinking through what they want to do and how they're going to manage the data they gather about young people. Right? These, GPS tracking bracelets, just like our smartphones, generate streams of information about where people go. And, probation departments aren't used to thinking of themselves as as data stewards, but that's what they are. They need to decide what information not just are they gonna collect, but how long do they keep this information and who do they share it with. There's a growing trend that probation departments will share these GPS data streams with law enforcement agencies. And I think that's a really tricky issue. Law enforcement agencies like to have all the people on probation do you attract because the first thing they do when there's a crime, right, is they can pull up a map Oh, I see. Showing them exactly whether there was anyone who was GPS tracked in this vicinity. You know, that that may have some long person utility, but it also means that young people are continually being monitored. And, traditionally, the relationship between a probation officer and the young person was actually supposed to be one of support. Right? Probation was originally thought as as one of the helping professions. Probation officers are supposed to help young people get back on the right track. And one question one might ask is will it disrupt that relationship if probation officers are instead attaching a GPS device to a young person with all data going to law enforcement agencies. So those are a few policy recommendations. I I mean, one thing I haven't mentioned is, I think in general, the rules that, young people are asked to follow should be less burdensome. Right? So for example, they should be individually tailored. So if the issue is, for example, that a young person is, threatening or antagonizing a former romantic partner, right, they could, for example, be told to stay away from the places where that person is, but otherwise given, the ability to move freely. And and the final thing I'll just say is that a lot of these rules are written in terms that there's no way a young person could understand them. So, I analyzed yeah. I mean, I analyzed all of the I got the contracts that you have people have to agree to in all of the counties. And the typical contract is written at the eleventh to twelfth grade level. But the juvenile justice system actually, there are a fair number of kids who are 14 and 15 and even some who are younger in the system. And many, kids in the juvenile system don't read at grade level. And a few counties actually had contracts written at the college reading level. Wow. So,

Right. Right. Exactly. So, anyway, those are a few policy recommendations. Those are great. But it was an interesting

Yeah. I'm hoping to convince the probation officers to actually talk about this, to talk about, like, are there, ways to craft these rules that can be implemented, that meet what probation officers think are their legitimate needs, but that are less burdensome for young people. And and this is the system where the probation officers really are the the probation officers really are the policy makers. Right? And so persuasion is the primary tool we have available to us, to try to improve practices.

You can always reach me by, by email. My email address is on my, my, Berkeley Law, website

Thanks a lot.