The Monitor Newsletter – October 2009
iSECUREtrac Corporation
Omaha, Nebraska
Licensed User of OTTER

In the following article Automated Voice Notification (AVN) refers to AquilaVision’s OTTER.

Victim Notification
Notifying authorities in an appropriate time frame is a huge concern for agencies, especially when a victim’s welfare is at stake. Depending on the system, an agency has a variety of options when it comes to victim notification. iSECUREtrac offers a system called Automated Voice Notification (AVN) that, when activated, immediately and simultaneously notifies the victim and up to 19 other contacts, such as the supervising officer, 911 dispatch, the victim’s parents or friends should the perpetrator venture into an exclusion zone (victim’s house, child’s daycare facility, work etc.). Some agencies prefer notification by monitoring center staff. However, simultaneous automated notification of friends, neighbors and law enforcement is far more expedient than a series of calls initiated by a monitoring center specialist. Furthermore, automated redialing of undelivered messages eliminates human error and unnecessary delays.

To read full story on Technology and Domestic Violence visit: http://isecuretrac.com/Library.aspx?id=8

AquilaVision Partners with Montana Sheriffs & Peace Officers Association

AquilaVision, Inc. and Invizeon partner with the Montana Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association on Appropriation Funded Project

January 18, 2008

http://matr.net/article-27336.html

The Fiscal Year 2008 Omnibus Appropriations Bill holds good news for Montanans. Among the $112 Million headed to the state, over $650,000 will be used to improve public safety, decrease the amount of non-violent offenders being housed in publicly funded jail and detention facilities, and ultimately save Montanans money.

The Montana Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association has teamed with MonTEC tenant company, AquilaVision, Inc. http://www.aquilavision.com/ to complete the MONTS (Montana Offender Notification and Tracking System) project. AquilaVision’s OTTER system will be a key element in this project. OTTER is an offender tracking system that utilizes GPS signals to track offenders, vehicles or other objects of interest. This real-time system allows for internet-accessible tracking.

Full Story: http://www.maedc.org/CMSNewsletter.aspx?ID=38

Missoula companies demonstrate technology to keep track of offenders

By CHELSI MOY of The Missoulian

Cutting-edge technology is part of the answer to Missoula County’s jail overcrowding problem, Sheriff Mike McMeekin says.

Finding alternative solutions to jail is no longer optional, but a necessity, he said.

In fact, the public safety sector is moving away from adding jail beds in favor of other, unconventional approaches. Communities nationwide are relying more and more on gadgets that track and monitor offenders who live outside the walls of a jail.

Last week, Missoula Correctional Services Inc., which operates the pre-release center and many of the alternative-to-jail programs in the city, signed a contract with a Missoula-based company to begin using satellite tracking of criminal offenders.

The use of global positioning systems to track accused – or convicted – offenders is not new. Billings does it. Heavily populated urban states have done it for five years. Part of the reason the rest of Montana was slow to jump on the new technology was because it didn’t work well in rural areas, said Bill Slaughter, former director of Montana’s Department of Corrections.

Now AquilaVision, which works out of the MonTECH center in Missoula, has joined with another Missoula-based company, Invizeon, to create a GPS offender tracking system focused on rural areas.
An offender wearing a GPS monitoring bracelet around their ankle is tracked by a satellite. That information is then recorded and transferred using cell phone towers, which can then be uploaded on any computer in real time. So as long as the offender is within Verizon cell phone coverage, authorities can track their whereabouts.

If the offender runs off, gets too close to their victim’s residence or cuts off the bracelet, an automated emergency notification goes out to the 9-1-1 dispatch center, local police, the sheriff and sometimes even the victim.

“This is the future,” said Slaughter, who now works for the Missoula-based company that produces the GPS tracking devices.

Determining to what extent Missoula County can take advantage of these services is part of the responsibility of Margaret Borg, former chief public defender, now on contract to find ways to ease overcrowding at the county jail.

Thirty-five offenders in 18 Montana counties already are monitored by the GPS offender tracking program, Slaughter said. Of those, six reside in Missoula County.
Besides Missoula, six other Montana counties may sign up for GPS tracking within the week, he said.

Missoula currently uses electronic monitors, which are useful in home-arrest cases, said Sue Wilkins, executive director of Missoula Correctional Services Inc. Authorities know when they walk away from their homes, but the problem is that you don’t know where they go.

Increased tracking ability “may allow the county and courts to move some people out of jail, which they may not be willing to do otherwise,” Wilkins said.

Montana’s rural landscape is not the only thing keeping counties from taking full advantage of this advanced technology. There’s always a cost involved, said Mike Sehestedt, deputy Missoula County attorney.

The argument in support of many alternative-sentencing and pre-trial programs is the social benefit. Keeping inmates out of jail allows them to keep their health insurance, a job, their home and continue to make payments that would otherwise become a burden on state taxpayers.

But public officials are always a little skeptical of new technology when the taxpayers are footing the bill, Sehestedt said.

“They are probably pretty slick, as long as they work as advertised,” he said. “To the extent that technology is a force multiplier, I think, yes.”

But the solution to the Missoula County jail’s overcrowding problems is not as simple as strapping a tracking device to an offender’s ankle. Part of the solution includes encouraging law enforcement to cite and release more offenders, providing those who are jailed with more opportunities to post bail, and increasing the limited number of offenders who qualify for supervision within the community.

So while GPS monitoring is not an end-all answer, “it’s fair to say that as technology gets better, the criminal justice system will be using it as a viable alternative form of supervision,” Sehestedt said.

Missoula companies demonstrate technology to keep track of offenders

By TYLER CHRISTENSEN of the Missoulian

The Montana Department of Corrections is faced with the daunting task of supervising 12,000 offenders, more than 8,000 of which are under intensive supervision outside of prison. That means the average probation or parole officer in Montana must keep track of 70 to 100 offenders.

Two Missoula-based technology companies have developed an automated tracking system that could make that task a whole lot easier.

AquilaVision Inc., a local company that specializes in law enforcement solutions, and Invizeon Corp., which specializes in communications solutions, teamed up to develop a new program that allows authorities to monitor offenders around the clock – and instantly alerts law enforcement of violations.

Bill Slaughter, former director of the Montana Department of Corrections and current director of public safety initiatives for AquilaVision, demonstrated the system Tuesday during the Missoula Area Economic Development Corp.’s annual awards luncheon.

Electronic monitoring is a reliable, affordable way to enhance public safety and has the potential to become a key corrections tool in Montana, he said. Similar systems are in use in other parts of the country, he added, but his company’s is the first designed specifically for use in rural communities.

The new program allows officers to follow an individual offender’s movements in real time on an Internet map via an electronic ankle bracelet that emits a signal, Slaughter explained. If the bracelet is tampered with in any way, it triggers an alert that notifies the proper authorities at once.

The system also triggers an alert if offenders go any place they’re not supposed to or if they aren’t where they’re supposed to be when they’re supposed to be there. It logs all violations, major and minor, so that parole officers have an indisputable account of offenders’ activities to take to court.

The program helps officers organize their caseload, Slaughter said, by flagging violations on a chart listing each offender. Rather than constantly review each offender’s activities, officers can simply scan the list for flags.

“We’re giving them a tool so they can do their job better,” Slaughter said.

Parole and probation officers can even send messages to offenders, and their tracking device will keep beeping until they push a button to acknowledge they got the message. This sort of thing would be especially helpful in working with addicted offenders, Slaughter said, because they often have to be reminded of their responsibilities over and over again.

For most of Slaughter’s 30-year career in law enforcement, his focus was on putting criminals in prison, he said. However, for the last few years of his career his focus shifted to rehabilitating and getting nonviolent offenders out of prison.

Roughly 2.5 million Americans are currently in prison, he noted. The nation’s prisons are full and still filling, but rather than add more beds to its prisons, the state of Montana should invest in other corrections options, such as drug courts, mental health courts, drug and alcohol treatment programs – and electronic monitoring systems.

At $15 a day, these systems are affordable, Slaughter said. Furthermore, the offender would be expected to pay that cost, not the taxpayer.

The tracking program has potential applications outside of law enforcement, he added. It could be used in the health-care field to locate patients with Alzheimer’s, for instance.

AquilaVision is a tenant in the Montana Technology Enterprise Center, a business incubator supported by the University of Montana and run by the Missoula Area Economic Development Corp., explained MAEDC president and chief executive officer Dick King.

As part of the awards luncheon, his organization presented DirecTV with its C.P. Higgins Award and Spiker Communications with its Frank Worden Award.

King noted that a recently completed cost-benefit analysis by the Montana Department of Commerce shows the state stands to recoup its $2.8 million investment in the DirecTV project within three years. That return will primarily come in the form of income taxes. As of Tuesday, said site director Mark Caple, DirecTV employs 840 workers at its Missoula call center.