Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley, along with five senators and 12 House members, sent a letter to eight private probation and electronic monitoring (EM) companies, expressing concern about the industries’ abusive business practices, which often drive poor and vulnerable communities into cycles of debt or jail time.
In the criminal system, EM technology is used to track and analyze the location of people under court supervision. Since 2005, EM usage in the United States has increased almost tenfold. Although states pay EM companies for their services, these companies charge “users” an additional supervision fee, often along with hundreds of dollars in other hidden junk fees for mandatory services, such as for battery replacements or device installations. All told, a person on EM can end up owing more than $3,000 per year to an EM company.
“EM is part of a growing trend of the government handing off the administration of criminal and immigration supervision to the private sector — and then allowing private companies to collect excessive fees,” wrote the lawmakers. “EM appears to offer many jurisdictions a cheap shortcut at the cost of individuals’ safety, freedom, and privacy.”
Individuals on EM disproportionately live below the poverty line, and these unnecessary fees drive many into crushing cycles of debt. In the worst cases, and despite constitutional prohibitions to the contrary, those who cannot pay are sometimes jailed for violating the payment terms of their release.
Individuals on electronic monitoring devices also face non-financial harms, including: software malfunctions that can lead to punishment for suspected violations of the terms of their release; hardware malfunctions such as electric shocks; societal stigma; a loss of privacy rights; and unduly onerous and vague conditions. Vulnerable groups such as domestic violence survivors, unhoused individuals, and people with disabilities face additional risks on electronic monitoring.
Similarly, probation management companies, which are tasked with collecting individuals’ court debt, charge excessive fees to many Americans currently on probation.
Although many end up on probation simply because they are charged with a minor misdemeanor or traffic offense, they may face serious consequences, such as jail time, disenfranchisement, and ineligibility for certain public benefits once trapped in this system. Even if they avert jail time, individuals are left trapped in a cycle of debt: upon failing to pay their probation fees, they can be punished with an extension of their probation periods, which comes with additional probation fees that drive them deeper into debt. These fees disproportionately hurt Black and low-income people; two of every three people on probation make less than $20,000 per year.
“We are concerned about governments offloading the costs of the probation system onto individual ‘users’ of the system, while handing authority to companies that commit abuses with little oversight,” wrote the lawmakers.
In addition to Wyden and Merkley, the letter is also signed by U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), Peter Welch (D-Vt.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Representatives Tony Cárdenas (D-Calif.), Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas), Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-Calif.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), Cori Bush (D-Mo.), Danny Davis (D-Ill.), Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.), David Trone (D-Md.), and Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.).
The full letter on EM monitoring is here. The full letter on private probation is here.
A web version of this release is here.
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