North Dakota’s policy on the home monitoring option for those convicted to serve time in jail is problematic for a couple of reasons.

As reported in last week’s Minot Daily News, the North Dakota Legislature voted to pass the Re-investment Act. In summary, the Re-investment Act directed county jails and state correction facilities to come up with a plan to reduce inmate incarceration. One of those ways – and something already employed in Ward County prior to the official act of the Legislature – is home monitoring or home release. Via this system, offenders who arrive at a correctional facility and who qualify can be granted home monitoring. They are attached to a GPS system monitored by a third party agency, they are restricted as to where they can go – and obviously the screening process prevents dangerous criminals from being released into the community.

The system seems to function and achieve its goals – it reduces jail populations and thus saves money.

In Ward County, it seems to work just fine. Sheriff Bob Barnard says there are three such ‘inmates’ in the county, and there have been no known problems.

The problems are purely principled.

One is that the authority to approve an inmate for the program is made by jail administration, not judges or juries. Even given a perfectly effective screening test and standards, there will almost certainly be some discretion and that leaves room for bias and other abuses of the program. Many people, and presumably many jurors, are probably unaware that if they participate in a trial that leads to a sentence, the punishment might not be exactly what they believed. Some attorneys are not even aware of the program. While it may be working fine here in Ward County today, abuse of the system anywhere is hardly unimaginable.

Second is that an inmate must pay to be eligible. While covering cost of the electronic monitoring system is principled, one of the benefits of the whole plan is saving money, and home monitoring saves the much, much higher sum of actual jail space. Only those who can afford the payments participate, contributing to the perceptions of incarceration too often mirroring debtors’ prisons and of there being two different justice systems based on class.

The North Dakota Legislature might consider amending the system. Taxpayers and potential jurors should also be aware of it.