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Market Survey of Offender Tracking Technologies Gives Agencies a Snapshot of Available Products

Law enforcement and corrections administrators tasked with implementing electronic monitoring programs can find information that may help them make procurement decisions in a study conducted with NIJ funding.
Date Published
September 30, 2016

Released in May 2016, the Market Survey of Location-Based Offender Tracking Technologies, Version 1.1 (pdf, 166 pages) compares information on 13 commercially available systems provided by 10 different vendors. That information includes product details, functionality, and warranty information. It also includes information on training and assistance offered by the vendor, as well as system performance and security. Vendors provided the majority of the information presented in this study.

Agencies seeking to implement such systems may also want to review two studies conducted by the John’s Hopkins University for NIJ, GPS Monitoring Practices in Community Supervision and the Potential Impact of Advanced Analytics, Version 1.0 (pdf 42 pages) and Geospatial Monitoring of Community – Released Offenders: An Analytics Market Survey Version 2.0 (pdf, 67 pages). These studies assess the potential for using advanced analytics to enhance the capabilities of such systems. Included in the information provided in the studies that agencies might find useful is a summary of the analytics capabilities of commercially available software.

These reports provide an overview of commercially available technology at the time of publication. Agencies seeking to implement electronic monitoring systems should solicit additional information from the field before making any decisions.

Agencies seeking to implement such systems may also want to consider NIJ Standard-1004.00 Criminal Justice Offender Tracking Standard (pdf, 131 pages). Published in July 2016, this standard provides minimum performance requirements that agencies may want to consider incorporating into their procurement specifications. It was developed for NIJ by a special technical committee composed of expert practitioners representing such diverse agencies as the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and the Harris County (TX) Pretrial Services, as well as scientists and experts in performance testing and conformity assessment. The American Jail Association, National Sheriffs’ Association, and the American Probation and Parole Association, among others, also participated in development of this standard.

About this Article

The work described in the article was supported by NIJ cooperative agreement number 2013-MU-CX-K111, awarded to Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, which hosts NIJ’s National Criminal Justice Technology Research, Test and Evaluation Center. This article is based on the grantee report Market Survey of Location-Based Offender Tracking Technologies, Version 1.1 (pdf, 166 pages).

Date Published: September 30, 2016