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Texas Students Who Skip School to Be Tracked by GPS?

by Will Safer on November 26, 2008 at 11:04 AM



According to KBTX-TV, a Texas judge wants to slap monitoring devices on the ankles of truant students, allowing the court and anyone else it allows to track the kids 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Brazos County Justice of the Peace Tommy Munoz requested an opinion on the plan from the Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott. Abbott has not yet responded to the request.

The monitoring bracelets would be similar to those put on people under house arrest, but there are important differences in this program, including the fact that the truant kids' parents may have to foot the bill for the devices. The initial plan is to order 10 electronic monitoring devices at a cost of $20,000. If the pilot program gets permission and works well, the court would order more.
These monitoring bracelets can either work with the old radio transmission method or with GPS. It isn't yet known which kind these would be.

Failure to attend school is a misdemeanor in Texas and the court has the power to compel a student to go to class, attend a special school, perform community service and also have both the student and the parents attend a special class on the risks of missing school. The court can also put a real crimp in the student's locomotion by suspending his or her drivers license.

So far, the ordinance on truant students does not allow for consistent electronic monitoring, a measure reserved for people the court has already found guilty of stalking, someone who has been ordered to serve jail time but the court feels can be at home with an ankle device, or someone who posts bail but the court feels may still be a flight risk. In short, this is a measure typically reserved for more serious types of offenders or defendants.

Around the country, GPS devices increasingly are being used by law enforcement to monitor the activities of sex offenders, gang members on probation and repeat offenders. Some jurisdictions are using it to help prevent domestic violence. And in some interesting cases, people's own car GPS devices are being used to track where they've been, to help prove or disprove an alibi.

According to Munoz' question to the AG, the monitoring device would be an alternative to sending a kid to a juvenile delinquent program. Plus "it may also serve to deter future criminality." [From: KBTX.]

Tags: Ankle bracelet, AnkleBracelet, education, GPS tracking, GpsTracking, Texas, truancy

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