Outsourced GPS Monitoring Service

When a person is under surveillance, he or she may need an outsourced GPS monitoring service. The DOC Electronic Monitoring Center is one example. The Hays County Jail is another. The Pew Charitable Trusts conducted a study of the use of electronic monitoring and found that 125,000 people were wearing them in 2015, compared with five thousand in 2005. More states and jurisdictions are outsourcing these programs to private companies to raise revenue. Some are concerned that these programs put poor people in danger.

Hays County Jail

In November 2013, the sheriff’s office in Hays County, Texas, decided to stop allowing in-person visits to inmates and started a contract with a GPS monitoring service, Securus. The company charges up to $8 for video visits and $10 for phone calls.

The jail is overcrowded and has a reputation for being understaffed, so a GPS monitoring service could help. Hays County jail is a medium-security detention center located in San Marcos, Texas. It opened in 1984 and was designed to house up to 362 inmates. However, by 2004, theĀ gps monitoring service jail was seeing a 240% increase in the average daily population.

The Hays County Jail houses about 8,000 inmates per year, but not all of them have been convicted of crimes. Some are simply waiting for trial. In this case, Dykes was in the jail because he was awaiting trial but could not afford bail. According to Capt. Mark Cumberland, HCSO’s jail manager, the CCS solution solved some of the issues they were experiencing in the medical unit. In addition to improving healthcare, the infirmary can now perform a number of procedures in-house.

The program has three levels of service. First, it allows inmates to have two on-site visits a week. A second level of service includes a doctor on call for questions. The software is cloud-based, so new clients can be added within seconds. And deputies can access it from any device.