Jan. 5—Sometimes they want you home at a certain hour or tell you not to leave the house at all. Other times they order you to stay out of certain areas of town or away from specific people.
But it’s up to you to listen.
And, for those who don’t want to listen, it’s no secret that you can cut through them with a blade or simply let the battery die. And, sooner or later, you could expect authorities to come knocking.
But only 6%, or 268, of the 4,782 people placed on an ankle monitor pending trial statewide had an arrest warrant issued for not following the rules in 2023 and 2024, according to available data from New Mexico’s Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC).
The AOC data — which captures cases of those ordered to wear GPS monitors while on pretrial release — is from after-hours monitoring and does not cover possible noncompliance violations that happen between 8:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m.
The other seven hours of the day are monitored by pretrial program staff employed within individual courthouses. The AOC said a full accounting of violations is unavailable due to court-based programs not being fully operational and the data being unreliable.
However, the available data, which has only been recently compiled by AOC, does paint a picture of what’s occurring in a few years’ time.
In fiscal year 2023 and 2024, 148 people on an ankle monitor let the battery die, 73 cut off the device, 19 missed curfew, 19 went somewhere they shouldn’t have and nine broke house arrest, according to the data.
And a number of those 6% had the arrest warrant canceled after giving a good explanation for breaking the rules: unintentionally letting the battery die or missing curfew for extenuating circumstances.
The other 94% of people on an ankle monitor never even had to explain themselves as they never violated the conditions placed on them, as far as the courts were concerned.
“It’s not sexy to tell people that this guy showed up to court every time and he went to treatment and he’s not tested positive (for drugs) in three months,” Marshall Dixon, the AOC’s statewide pretrial program manager, told the Journal. “All we hear in the news media is all negative, all failures and bad decisions made by people that potentially made bad decisions in the past.”
Those who have studied the topic, and attorneys representing clients on pretrial release, say the efficacy of GPS monitoring is unproven and can make it harder on defendants, particularly those who live on the streets.
Ankle monitors and pretrial release in general have been controversial topics since 2016 when New Mexico voters passed a constitutional amendment that did away with a money-based system for getting out of jail while awaiting trial.
While in the minority, the cases of defendants cutting off their ankle monitors dominate headlines and are echoed by lawmakers during legislative sessions to push for policy change.
Such was the case in August 2021, when homicide suspect Trey Bausby cut off his GPS monitor and was on the run for 24 hours before authorities were notified, catching the ire of the Albuquerque police chief and the Bernalillo County district attorney.
At the time, ankle monitors were only monitored by pretrial services during business hours, between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m., and not on weekends or holidays. A month after the incident with Bausby — who was eventually offered a plea deal by prosecutors and given a one-year prison sentence — the AOC announced it would start 24/7 GPS monitoring.
And with that, the AOC Electric Monitoring and Supervision Unit was born.
Not ‘black and white’
As pretrial services staff at 2nd Judicial District Court get ready to clock out, AOC employees are starting their shift down the street in the U.S. Bank building.
The staff sit at computer screens with maps of the county as GPS monitors track defendants with arrows showing the direction they are headed and circles for the areas they are not allowed to be in.
When an alert is received, one staff member determines if it is worth further investigation. In case of a cut unit, dead battery or entering an exclusion zone, it’s all hands on deck: Staff members try to reach the defendant and, if needed, the victim in the case.
“We’re always trying to figure out what exactly we have because sometimes the alerts aren’t as clear as you would like them to be. A lot of this isn’t black and white,” Dixon said.
Alerts can turn dire.
In a case a few months ago, Dixon said, a defendant was tracked to the backyard of their alleged victim and AOC staff called law enforcement, which arrested him for the violation before the situation could escalate.
If AOC staff cannot reach the defendant to get to the bottom of an alert, which staff try to do through several means, an arrest warrant is issued for violating the conditions of their release.
Some violations are innocuous and explained away when the defendant meets with pretrial staff — like when a puppy chewed the charging cord to a defendant’s ankle monitor.
In the latter case, Dixon said, the defendant brought in the cord and charging station with clear puppy teeth markings throughout.
The monitoring isn’t perfect or foolproof.
Dixon said sometimes a vehicle roof can block the signal from the ankle monitor or a nearby mirror can deflect it to show it pinging in a separate location.
“Technology is not perfect 100% of the time,” he said.
Cages without bars
At least one study found ankle monitors can do more harm than good, particularly for minorities and those living on the streets.
Using data from Bernalillo County and eight other jurisdictions nationwide, “Cages Without Bars,” a 2022 report published by the Shriver Center for Poverty Law, Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts and MediaJustice, found there is too little data to say if GPS is “an effective tool” in keeping a defendant out of trouble while making sure they comply with court requirements.
“In fact, our research suggests that pretrial defendants on electronic monitors are often at risk of greater involvement in the criminal legal system,” according to the report, which found GPS monitoring offers “no real avenue of progress” for defendants or the justice system while stigmatizing the former.
The study also found that the units, which have to be charged for multiple hours a day, required that defendants have “stable housing and reliable electricity,” and restrictions can prevent necessary tasks, like getting prescriptions or medical treatment.
The study made several recommendations, including using GPS monitoring “sparingly,” not charging defendants a fee, prioritizing data safety and privacy, collecting data to determine effectiveness and setting “clear criteria that incorporate due process to determine who is placed on (electronic monitoring), for how long, and under what conditions.”
In some cases, a defendant can be wearing one for several months to years due to delays in the justice system. An Albuquerque acupuncturist accused of sexual assault wore an ankle monitor for four years before being found not guilty.
During that time, the device was taken off the man’s ankle once for a brief adjustment.
Gilbert Jaramillo, AOC’s senior statewide pretrial program manager, said for most people who see a GPS monitor on someone’s ankle “the assumption is: that’s a criminal.”
“They don’t know that this person has a court hearing in a couple weeks and, for all we know, their case may be dismissed and they’re never convicted of any crime,” he said.
For those living on the streets, the study found compliance can get complicated. In Bernalillo County, the study notes, pretrial staff had to request a homeless defendant be taken off GPS “because of their unintentional inability to reliably comply with the conditions of the program.”
Dixon and his crew at the AOC put it bluntly: Burger King does not want you in their restaurant for two hours charging.
Managing Attorney Kate Thompson, with the Law Offices of the Public Defender’s Metro Division, said clients charged with misdemeanors have to pay around $7 a day for the unit — the first hurdle.
Defendants on pretrial release in felony cases do not pay for GPS monitoring.
“So you’re looking at at least a couple hundred bucks a month, which, for indigent defendants, can be, financially, extremely difficult to manage,” Thompson said. “You’re talking about the choice between paying for the GPS or paying for food. It can be just nearly impossible for them to afford. But also the alternative to that tends to be, it’s jail or the GPS device.”
She said the second hurdle is keeping the device charged, an ongoing problem for LOPD’s clients with unstable housing. As for how they handle it, Thompson said she doesn’t know and can’t imagine.
For those living on the streets or couch-surfing, she said, pretrial release is “a cyclical thing where stuff just gets worse and worse,” leading to missing court dates, check-ins and hearing notices due to not having a car, phone or mailing address.
“It’s very frustrating for our clients and defendants to be subject to conditions that feel like a sentence,” she said. “When you have really strict pretrial services and you have GPS, it feels like you’re on probation already when you haven’t even been convicted of anything.”