GPS Has New Function: Helping Police Track Criminals

Electronic surveillance technology is changing the way the authorities in the United States monitor repeat offenders. Its advocates say the new technology can save lives. Its detractors fear a widening breach of civil liberties and an illusory sense of protection.

Coast to coast, the authorities are expanding electronic monitoring to fight crime. They are moving beyond its early use in tracking movements of sex offenders to include gang members who have been released on probation, people accused of repeated violence against women and even truant students at schools.

At the heart of the surveillance is a technology best-known for helping people on the road: the Global Positioning System, or GPS. Other countries are watching closely. GPS monitoring is already established in parts of Europe but applied more narrowly, and it is growing fast in Latin America, said Jeff Durski, spokesman for iSECUREtrac, which is based in Omaha, Nebraska, and makes the devices and leases them to the police and courts.

Massachusetts, one of the first states to employ it in 2006, has about 700 people fitted with electronic bracelets that send signals via satellite to computer servers if they go places they should not — “exclusion zones.”

The Massachusetts law, which allows judges to impose electronic monitoring as a condition of a restraining order, has become a model for other states. The Oklahoma Senate voted 47 to 0 in April to enlist GPS technology to protect victims of domestic violence. The Illinois House of Representatives unanimously passed similar surveillance legislation last month.

Part of the appeal is the cost savings. GPS is a cost-effective alternative to prison, said Paul Lucci, deputy commissioner of the Massachusetts Probation Service, pointing to a chart taped to his office wall showing a state-wide surge in use of GPS, mostly to track sex offenders but also for others. “These people…