New Louisiana Law To Regulate Electronic Ankle Monitors

It's been a long time coming, but ankle monitor providers will be governed by standards under Louisiana law for the first time. House Bill 556 will mandate oversight of electric monitoring providers and require them to follow Department of Public Safety & Corrections regulations.

Interestingly, no standard governing ankle monitor providers have ever been established. Chief Paul with the Baton Rouge Police Department said, “It’s not just about easy for us. It’s about holding those individuals out on bond more accountable and looking at all of the issues over the years where they were not held accountable. This puts that standard into place to prevent things from happening that we’ve dealt with in the past,” said Chief Paul with the Baton Rouge Police Department.

Under the new law, everyone will face consequences for an ankle bracelet being tampered with. From now on, the electric monitoring provider and the offender will be fined. However, it's unclear what the fine will be. Here's more info from Baton Rouge WAFB News:

Going forward, Louisiana officials have established standards with clear regulations, expectations, and consequences. Hopefully, this will go a long way toward keeping the public safe and improving Louisiana's monitoring technology and capabilities.

Researchers at Baton Rouge Public Safety expressed that loosely regulated ankle bracelets have been a cause for concern for some time. Trey Godfrey, the senior vice president of policy for BRAC, spoke about the new law.

“The issues that slip through the cracks or things that happen unbeknownst to law enforcement are now built in so that they’ll have knowledge. There will be reporting requirements so that the entire apparatus of our justice system will all be on the same page.”

WAFB reports Judge Don Johnson, 19th Judicial Court, agrees that House Bill 556 will streamline every entity connected to the released individual from the moment they bond out. Judge Johnson said, “This bill helps us to provide a systematic approach to those entities that will be supervising those released on bond, released out of jail, and they need to be supervised pretrial in the community while they’re out on bond.”

House Bill 556 goes into effect on August 1, 2024.