You can run but you can never hide: Radio tags to track inmates
Inmates can run, but they can't hide - not so long as a radio-linked wristband remains attached, pinpointing their location within a few feet.
Removing or breaking the bracelet sets off a computer alarm, alerting guards to a possible prison escape. It's an emerging technology that could transform the way convicts are managed, contained and monitored.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department announced Sunday it will adopt the technology for the nation's largest jail system, using an updated version of the devices tested at California's Calipatria State Prison, a remote desert facility 35 miles north of the Mexican border - the first in the nation to track its inmates electronically.
The concept has since been exported to other states.
LA county will spend $1.5 million to help control about 1,900 inmates and protect guards in one unit of the Pitchess Detention Center in Castaic, about 40 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles, beginning early next year.
If it works well, it may be expanded to the 6,000 residents of LA County's Central Jail and then to other facilities, said Marc Klugman, chief of the sheriff's department's Correctional Services Division.
