Cook County’s aging electronic bracelet system that monitors criminal offenders and those charged with crimes who are considered low risks has failed nearly 100 times since 1993, according to a Sheriff’s Department letter obtained by the Tribune.
According to the Sept. 23 letter to county commissioners, from David Devane, executive director of the sheriff’s Department of Community Supervision and Intervention, the failures lasted “from a few minutes to more than 24 hours.” Devane assured commissioners that “no system crash has yet impacted public safety, but the potential for impacting public safety is present and increases over time.”
Devane added that the system’s computers are housed in a 70-year-old building that is inhospitable “to computer operation.”
Devane’s department is in charge of electronic monitoring, the program established several years ago to help relieve overcrowding at County Jail by placing individuals under house arrest and fitting them with a bracelet that allows authorities to keep tabs on them.
He wrote the confidential letter after commissioners, at their Sept. 23 County Board meeting, questioned extending the maintenance contract with BI Inc., which supplied the system.
Sheriff’s officials, backing the extension, said at the board meeting it would allow the department “to determine the scope of our requirements for a new electronic monitoring system.”
Devane on Tuesday was out of the country and could not be reached for comment. But sheriff’s spokesman Bill Cunningham said of the technical failures, “We don’t think this represents any kind of urgent public safety problems, but obviously if there’s a problem with the technology, we want to get it corrected.”
County Board member Peter Silvestri questioned whether public safety already had not been compromised by the electronic failures.
“I’d like to know how (safety) wasn’t affected when you don’t know where the people are,” Silvestri said. “Any time we utilize a means of deterrence other than routine incarceration, we have to be very careful.”
The system monitors about 1,100 detainees through a system of bracelets, modems and computers.
According to the letter, the computers have been in continuous use since February 1992.
“The useful life of such equipment is estimated at five years,” Devane wrote. “We are now seven months past the end of this period.”
The age of the equipment is exacerbated by the environment where they operate. Devane said, “The room is not controlled for heat, dust or humidity.”
Board member Carl Hansen said he has written a letter asking county building officials to investigate whether the system’s computers are housed in a space hostile to electronic equipment. “We have to take immediate action to make sure that we aren’t contributing to the problem,” Hansen said.
Devane noted that his department has been able to minimize the impact of equipment failures through careful management. He told commissioners that while a “detailed” emergency plan is in place, “there will come a time in the near future when these measures will be insufficient.”
